For billions of people, mountain meltwater is essential for drinking water and sanitation, food and energy security, and the integrity of the environment. But today, as the world warms, glaciers are melting faster than ever, making the water cycle more unpredictable and extreme. And because of glacial retreat, floods, droughts, …
Mountainous areas in the northern Pakistan are blessed by numerous rivers that have great potential in water resources and hydropower production. Many of these rivers are unexploited for their water resource potential. If the potential of these rivers are explored, hydropower production and water supplies in these areas may be …
Glacial melting in the Tibetan Plateau affects the water resources of millions of people. This study finds that—partly owing to changes in atmospheric circulations and precipitation patterns—the most intensive glacier shrinkage is in the Himalayan region, whereas glacial retreat in the Pamir Plateau region is less apparent.
The glaciers of the Hindu Kush-Himalayan (HKH) region are among the largest and most spectacular in the world. Although there is some scientific knowledge and information about the state of the glaciers of the HKH region, with implications for future water supplies, there is also significant uncertainty. Concern has been …
A serious lack of reliable and consistent data severely hampers scientific knowledge about the state of Himalayan glaciers. As a result, the contribution of glacial melt to the Himalayan river basins remains uncertain. This is of grave importance because declining water availability could threaten the food security of more than …
In this study, Gangotri glacier was monitored using Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) LISS-III sensor data in combination with field collected snow-meteorological data for a period of seven years (2001–2008). An overall decreasing trend in the areal extent of seasonal snow cover area (SCA) was observed. An upward shifting trend of …
Glaciers are among the best indicators of terrestrial climate variability, contribute importantly to water resources in many mountainous regions and are a major contributor to global sea level rise. In the Hindu Kush–Karakoram–Himalaya region (HKKH), a paucity of appropriate glacier data has prevented a comprehensive assessment of current regional mass …
A measurement by satellite altimetry shows the Himalayan glaciers to be losing mass at only moderate rates, but raises broader questions about other methods for estimating mass balance.
The Supreme Court directive asking the government to build a road to the Amarnath cave shrine and improve infrastructure along it is likely to snowball into a controversy. A day after Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq expressed concerns over the apex court’s directive, civil society groups in Kashmir called for …
Glaciers of the Himalaya contribute significantly in the processes linking atmosphere, biosphere and hydrosphere, thus need to be monitored in view of the climatic variations. In this direction, many studies have been carried out during the last two decades and satellite-based multispectral data have been used extensively for this purpose …
During the last three years, the Regional Climate Change Adaptation Knowledge Platform (AKP) has worked towards building bridges between existing knowledge on adaptation to climate change and the governments, agencies and communities that need this knowledge to inform their adaptation to the impacts of climate change, while working to reduce …
Climate change is emerging as a new challenge that governments have to address effectively. Mountain regions are facing accelerating climate change, thereby adversely impacting ecosystems services, biodiversity elements and livelihood security. Mountain ecosystems due to their sensitive and fragile nature act as a laboratory where the impacts of climate change …
Environmentalists are demanding greater environmental management of religious tourism. The death of 98 pilgrims in the Amarnath Yatra has highlighted the need to ensure better man-management in these ecologically-fragile regions. Already, three lakh pilgrims have visited the Amarnath shrine while the number in 2011 was around 7.5 lakhs. Environmentalist Prof. …
A s the silver waters of the Kishanganga rush through this north Kashmir valley, Indian labourers are hard at work on a hydropower project that will dam the river just before it flows across one of the world's most heavily militarised borders into Pakistan. The hum of excavators echoes through …
A massive iceberg — twice the size of Manhattan — has broken off of a glacier in Greenland, according to NASA satellite imagery, in what could be the latest indication of global warming. The images released on Wednesday show the massive chunk of ice breaking off of the Petermann Glacier …
The annual rate of shrinkage is 48.2 metres in terms of length and 0.57 % in terms of area A majority of glaciers in the Tibetan Plateau and the surrounding regions are retreating, according to a study published recently in Nature Climate Change . The Tibetan Plateau and surrounding regions …
Climate change effects are likely to continue to cause intense flood and drought in Assam. The recent unprecedented floods, accompanied by the erosion of the Brahmaputra, has brought the influencing factors of flood and erosion processes in Assam into focus. First, recent research indicates the likely impact of climate change, …
The majority of glaciers on the Tibetan plateau and in the surrounding region are retreating rapidly, according to a study based on 30 years of satellite and field measurements.
Glaciers nestling under the shadow of Diran and Rakaposhi, two towering peaks in the Karakoram Range of northern Pakistan, remain impervious to global warming and have even grown slightly in recent years, suggests a new study. Bucking regional and global trends that indicate ice loss, French glaciologists have confirmed that …
This study addresses the extrapolation of in-situ glacier mass balance measurements to the mountain-range scale and aims at deriving time series of area-averaged mass balance and ice volume change for all glaciers in the European Alps for the period 1900–2100. Long-term mass balance series for 50 Swiss glaciers based on …
A single large glacier can contain tens of millions of times the mass of a small glacier. Nevertheless, very small glaciers (with area ≤1 km2) are so numerous that their contribution to the world's total ice volume is significant and may be a notable source of error if excluded. With …
