glaciers
Green Glaciers: The Melting Grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau
31/07/10 21:18
An enormous amount of
attention has been paid to the loss of the ancient
glaciers in the Himalayas and across the Tibetan
plateau. Their retreat and the loss of glacial mass
have been tied to rising air temperatures, longer
warm seasons, and shifting precipitation patterns.
But while dramatic and newsworthy, the loss of
glaciers does not have an
immediate impact on most
people and ecosystems in the region beyond
dry-season flows. Glaciers represent old
reservoirs of water that build up over
decades, centuries, and even millennia.
However, most of the liquid water resources in
the Himalayas and plateau come from seasonally
frozen rain, groundwater, and snow, which
accumulate each winter and melt over the
following spring and summer to enter the
rivers, groundwater, and lakes of south and
central Asia.
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A Cold Controversy: Himalayan Glaciers
06/01/10 01:17
A controversy has
been brewing over glaciers and climate change,
especially the glaciers of the Himalayas and the
Tibetan plateau, a vast region that spans India,
Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, the Tibetan region of
China, and other parts of China too. The conflict
began last November after the Indian
government produced a report on their part
of the Himalayas, focusing on how the leading
edges of their glaciers (called the
snout) have been trending over the
past century or so. Were the snouts advancing?
Retreating? Using many lines of evidence, the
report stated that the snouts of their glaciers
were mostly retreating, but some were advancing.
The most important conclusion of the report was
that the movement of the snouts did not seem to
be related to climate change.
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