At nearly
D.P. Dobhal, a
glaciologist who has spent the last three years climbing and poking the
Chorabari glacier, stands at the edge of the snout and points ahead. Three
years ago, the snout was roughly
Mr. Dobhal’s steep and
solitary quest — to measure the changes in the glacier’s size and volume —
points to a looming worldwide concern, with particularly serious repercussions
for India and its neighbors. The thousands of glaciers studded across
Indian glaciers are among
the least studied in the world, lacking the decades of data that scientists
need to deduce trends. Nevertheless, the nascent research offers a snapshot of
the consequences of global warming for this country and raises vital questions
about how India will respond to them.
According to Mr. Dobhal’s
measurements, the Chorabari’s snout has retreated
A recent study by the
Indian Space Research Organization, using satellite imaging to gauge the
changes to 466 glaciers, has found more than a 20 percent reduction in size
from 1962 to 2001, with bigger glaciers breaking into smaller pieces, each one
retreating faster than its parent. A separate study found the Parbati glacier,
one of the largest in the area, to be retreating by
Similar losses are being
seen around the world. Lonnie G. Thompson, a glaciologist at Ohio State
University, found a 22 percent loss of ice on the Qori Kalis glacier in Peru
between 1963 and 2002. He called it “a repeating theme whether you are in
tropical Andes, the Himalayas or Kilimanjaro in Africa.”
The Chorabari, sweeping
down from Kedarnath peak across 2.3 square miles, is relatively lucky. It is
blessed with a thick cover of rocks and boulders, which acts as a sort of
insulation and slows the melting. Since Mr. Dobhal began collecting data here
in 2003, the Chorabari has been shedding its weight — that is to say, melting
faster than the rate at which snow and ice accumulates, and as a result,
thinning out by roughly five feet each year. The snow line, in addition, is
gradually moving higher.
A vast and ancient sheet
of ice, a glacier is in effect the planet’s most sensitive organ, like an aging
knee that feels the onset of winter. Its upper reaches accumulate snow and ice
when it is cold; its lower reaches melt when it is warm. Its long-term survival
depends on the balance between the buildup and the melting. Glaciers worldwide
serve as a barometer for global warming, which has, according to a report this
year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, been spurred in recent
decades by rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions.
Even the Himalayas have
grown measurably warmer. A recent study found that mean air temperature in the
northwestern Himalayan range had risen by 2.2 degrees Celsius in the last two
decades, a rate considerably higher than the rate of increase over the last 100
years.
In its report, the
international panel predicted that as these glaciers melt, they would increase
the likelihood of flooding over the next three decades and then, as they
recede, dry up the rivers that they feed. “In the course of the century,” it
warned darkly, “water supply stored in glaciers and snow cover are projected to
decline, reducing water availability in regions supplied by meltwater from
major mountain ranges, where more than one-sixth of the world population
currently lives.”
(By SOMINI SENGUPTA, The
New York Times, 17/07/2007)