Nations from India to Kazakhstan are far more dependent on melting glaciers for water than previously thought, particularly in summer droughts, scientists said on Wednesday, warning that rising temperatures were threatening supply.
Each summer, the 95,000 glaciers in the mountain region spanning from Kyrgyzstan’s Alai range to the Himalayas produce enough meltwater to support 221 million people, researchers at the British Antarctic Survey calculated.
That provides a crucial buffer against droughts, when rains fail and reserves are strained, according to the study which was published in the journal Nature.
However, such protection is under threat as ice caps shrink under rising global temperatures, threatening the region, said Hamish Pritchard, the study’s author.
“If we lose the glaciers, then we lose that protection from drought,” Pritchard said.
At least a third of the ice in the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush is to thaw by 2100, even if governments take tough action to limit global warming under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, a separate study found in February.
When drought hits, ice melt from those mountains — often referred to as the “third pole” — can account for up to 100 percent of the water in some of Asia’s main rivers, Pritchard said.
This water flow is expected to grow in the coming years as more of the ice melts, but would then start to decline toward the end of the century as the glaciers retreat — something that would exacerbate droughts, he said.
Droughts are already affecting people’s access to drinking water, food production and electricity generation across the region, said Luo Tianyi, senior manager for water risks at the World Resources Institute, a think tank.
“Water demand is also expected to grow significantly over the coming decades ... due to growing population, and food and energy demand,” Luo said. “If the demand is going up, but supply is going down, already stressed water resources is going to be even more scarce.”
The effects could be particularly severe in drought-prone regions with arid summers, such as the Aral basin in Central Asia, potentially forcing people to migrate or straining relations between nations that share a river, Pritchard said.
“As the climate crisis increases pressure on already scarce water supplies, the impacts will be felt most severely by those with least access to clean water, threatening their health and livelihoods,” said Jonathan Farr, policy analyst at the charity WaterAid. “It is the poorest communities who are paying the price for the world’s failure to act.”
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
Chinese authorities are snuffing out any remembrance of the deadly 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which happened 37 years ago yesterday, in a further tightening of a years-long campaign to erase what happened from public memory. Police told relatives of the victims they would not be allowed to visit a cemetery in Beijing on the anniversary of the crackdown, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Relatives of the victims visited the cemetery on the anniversary for more than 30 years to read memorial statements with police keeping watch, Amnesty International said. Hundreds of people,
RSS