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Himalayan glaciers getting smaller every year: Study

The study is the latest and perhaps most convincing indication that climate change is eating the Himalayas' glaciers, potentially threatening water supplies for hundreds of millions of people downstream across much of Asia.  

New Delhi Published on: June 20, 2019 6:35 IST
Representational Image
Image Source : PTI

Representational Image

Himalayan glaciers across India, China, Nepal and Bhutan have been losing the equivalent of more than a vertical foot and half of ice each year since 2000, a new comprehensive international study said on Wednesday.

The analysis, spanning 40 years of satellite observations, indicates that melting of the Himalayan glaciers caused by rising temperatures has accelerated dramatically since the start of the 21st century -- almost double the amount of melting that took place from 1975 to 2000.


"This is the clearest picture yet of how fast Himalayan glaciers are melting over this time interval, and why," said lead author Joshua Maurer, a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University's Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory.


The study appears this week in the journal Science Advances.

Currently harboring some 600 billion tonnes of ice, the Himalayas are sometimes called the earth's "Third Pole".




The new study synthesises data from across the region, stretching from early satellite observations to the present.


Temperatures vary from place to place, but from 2000 to 2016 they have averaged one degree Centigrade (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than those from 1975 to 2000.

Maurer and his colleagues analyzed repeat satellite images of some 650 glaciers spanning 2,000 kms from west to east. Many of the 20th-century observations came from recently declassified photographic images taken by US spy satellites.





Recent yearly losses have averaged about 8 billion tonnes of water, or the equivalent 3.2 million Olympic-size swimming pools, said Maurer.

Most individual glaciers are not wasting uniformly over their entire surfaces, he noted; melting has been concentrated mainly at lower elevations, where some ice surfaces are losing as much as five metres (16 feet) a year.




Maurer agrees that both soot and precipitation are factors, but due to the region's huge size and extreme topography, the effects are highly variable from place to place.



"It looks just like what we would expect if warming were the dominant driver of ice loss," he said.

Also Read: Third of Himalayan glaciers can no longer be saved: Study

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