Everest ice fields melting at alarming rate due to global warming, says Greenpeace
Pastor Dale Morgan
Everest ice fields melting at alarming rate due to global warming, says
Greenpeace*
Jonathan Watts in Beijing
Wednesday May 30, 2007
The Guardian
One of the world's most spectacular ice formations - the towering serac
ice field near Mount Everest's base camp - is rapidly shrinking as a
result of global warming, Greenpeace said today.
Before and after photographs released by the environmental group show
how the past 40 years of climate change are transforming the Himalayan
landscape as ancient glaciers melt and retreat higher up the slopes.
The first photograph, taken in 1968, shows a long valley filled with
white seracs, tilting pinnacles of ice as high as 20 metres, that form
on Rongbuk glacier on the northern slopes of Everest. In the second
photograph, taken this spring, the ice forest has virtually disappeared.
The valley is a grey desert of rocks covering the angular surface of the
glacier. The remaining seracs are barely visible on the right of the
picture, where they have retreated far up the slopes of Mount Guangming.
"The demise of the ice towers is the most significant sign of global
warming in the Himalayas," said Li Yan, a climate change campaigner who
was on one of Greenpeace's two recent expeditions to the region. "But
this is just one example of what is happening right across the
Qinghai-Tibet plateau. All the glaciers are depleting, threatening the
livelihoods of millions of people."
The implications are enormous. The plateau is referred to as the world's
third pole because it contains the biggest fields of ice outside of the
Arctic and Antarctic. Its glaciers are the source of Asia's biggest
rivers - Yangtze, Yellow, Indus and Ganges - which provide water for
more than a quarter of the planet's population.
International institutions have produced evidence that rising
temperatures are decimating ice fields. Last month, a report by the UN's
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecast that if current
trends continue, 80% of Himalayan glaciers will be gone in 30 years.
Professor Liu Shiyin of the Lanzhou institute of glaciology said the
main upstream impact of glacial melt was an increase in the risk of
flooding. Downstream flows were also affected presenting an increased
risk of water shortages .