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.”
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Japan’s northeast region late on Monday, prompting tsunami warnings and orders for residents to evacuate. A tsunami as high as three metres (10 feet) could hit Japan’s northeastern coast after an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.6 occurred offshore at 11:15 p.m. (1415 GMT), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. Tsunami warnings were issued for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori and Iwate, and a tsunami of 40cm had been observed at Aomori’s Mutsu Ogawara and Hokkaido’s Urakawa ports before midnight, JMA said. The epicentre of the quake was 80 km (50 miles) off the coast of
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
RSS