Himalayan Glaciers and Climate change
By Lakshita Vohra
Melting of Himalayan glaciers has been much in news and also the statement made by IPCC that glaciers Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035 also raised a controversy .So , in this blog I will talk about the state of himalayan glaciers and its impact on climate .
Intense melting of glaciers is actually very alarming . From different causes of melting glaciers like burning of fossil fuels , oil and gas drilling , deforestation are some . The impact of melting glaciers are also very severe on human life and the loss of biodiversity , from shortage of electricity to flooding to disappearing coral reefs , scarcity of drinking water to reduction of agricultural production .
The question is will Himalayan glaciers completely retreat at such faster rate and will disappear by 2035 ? UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC’s) 2007 working group 2 report which claimed that “Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate”seems to be made on little or no evidence as claimed by the report by senior glaciologist Vijay Kumar Raina .In a report by Raina , he said that this is a misimpression based on measurement of handful of glaciers .
One cannot deny that glaciers are melting but this claim that they will melt by 2035 is not justified at all , IPCC made this statement that glaciers are receding at a very fast rate and if this continues then chances are they will melt completely by 2035 giving global warming as the sole reason for this , the thing is it is was just a comment and not a well researched or a peer reviewed study and this make us think on the report brought by IPCC and the subsequent nobel they received on the same for telling this . It was just a speculation by an Indian researcher in 1999 in a magazine named ‘New Scientist’ . however there was no proven data to support this and it was just a speculation that was further used by IPCC and this entire controversy started .Infact , one of the panel members who helped in compiling report named George Kaiser , an expert in tropical glaciology at university of Insbruck at Austria said that ‘ It is so wrong that it is not even worth discussing ‘ so the entire timeline as mentioned in this pne line putting end by 2035 is highly a speculation and not scientific .
World wildlife fund said that there is evidence of glaciers retreating , in the example of khumbhu glacier that was used to summit Mount Everest in 1953 by Tenzing Norgay and Hillary noticed that glacier has retreated by more than 5 kms and 2 and a half miles since 1953 and also noticed that average temperature of 49 stations has risen by 1 degree centigrade and it is twice what is there in surrounding area. Earlier there was a thick ice crust and now there is a stream flowing rock face .
The report published by Raina that has analyzed remote sensing data throws light on 2 important and iconic glaciers ,one is Gangotri glacier and other is Siachen glacier . In Gangotri glacier , report suggest that it retreated at an average of 22 metres per year and shed of total 5% of its length from 1934 to 2003.In 2004 and 2005 retreat slowed to 12 metres a year and from 2007 onwards ‘ Gangotri has been practically at standstill ‘ , Raina ‘s reports claim , the other is even Siachen glacier in Kashmir has not shown much retreat in the past 50 years , Raina’s report claim .
There are certain characteristics of eastern and central Himalayan glaciers that they are summer accumulation type , that means they gain mass from summer monsoon snowfall whereas winter accumulation are generally present in northwest.
If the glacier is very steep and there is very fast flow and there is ablation for many years , the mass flux is reduced and glacier starts retreating , on the other hand if it does not then the glacier advances .Alone mass loss does not mean glaciers are receding as shown by simple robust modeling , future monsoon intensity may project that glaciers are receding but the current projections only signal uncertainty and does not tell much about change . Between 1975 and 2000 glaciers lost on average 0.25 metres of ice. In 2000 this loss increased to around half a metre every year and at lower levels the decline is up to five metres a year.
So , Himalayan glaciers are melting but not as fast as Alps and the argument that they will completely recede is untrue .Human induced activities is one of the reasons of melting glaciers. Water availability over next decades may become a concern and our current energy models needs to be changed to respond to this melting so that melting does not convert to receding and this ‘Rivers of ice’ remains.
