An urgent, but out of sight, threat

Polar, Himalayan glaciers melting rapidly

There has been grim news from glaciers the world over for many decades and it has got more serious and alarming in recent years. The poles of the earth are repositories of massive quantities of ice and they have a big role in regulating the world’s climate. Both the poles — the Antarctic and the Arctic — and the Himalayan ranges, known as the third pole, have been losing ice because of the retreat of glaciers. That has raised the prospect of drastic changes in climate and weather patterns, rise in sea levels, inundation of coastal cities and other habitats and large-scale loss of marine life, including fish. There have been studies on the general impact of the melting of glaciers and on how particular regions and eco-systems would be hit. All of them have sent distressing messages about the approaching apocalypse.

A new study has found that the Himalayan glaciers are melting at such an accelerated pace that they are losing ice 10 times more quickly in recent decades than in some centuries before that. They have lost 40% of their ice from their peak period and the shrinkage is faster than that of glaciers in other parts of the world. Satellite images have shown that thousands of glaciers have lost their ice, leading to lake formations and flash floods. It is not just the Himalayan glacier system that is under stress. Thwaites, the widest glacier on earth situated in western Antarctica, stretching across 120 km and over 1,000 metres deep, is also shedding its ice at a fast pace. In the last two decades, it has lost more than 1,000 billion tons of ice. All other glaciers are also unfreezing, upsetting nature’s balance across the world.

The retreat of the Himalayan glaciers will affect the water flow in the rivers that originate in those ranges and are fed by them. Some of these are the Indus, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra. These rivers form the lifelines of the countries in South Asia and over 40% of the region’s population is dependent on them. Rivers that flow to the other side of the Himalayas will also be affected. The collapse of Thwaites and other glaciers can send the sea levels very high across the world. Global warming is the reason for the retreat and eventual collapse of the glaciers. But warming is still only a distant idea for most people and climate change means only errant rains and cyclones for many. The role of glaciers in holding the world together has not entered the public consciousness at all. But the threat from the receding glaciers is real and coming generations will have to pay a heavy price for our neglect.