From Brigham Young University and the “IPCC, take your 2035 and shove it” department comes this study:
Himalayan glaciers will shrink even if temperatures hold steady
Come rain or shine, or even snow, some glaciers of the Himalayas will continue shrinking for many years to come.
The forecast by Brigham Young University geology professor Summer Rupper comes after her research on Bhutan, a region in the bull’s-eye of the monsoonal Himalayas. Published in Geophysical Research Letters,Rupper’s most conservative findings indicate that even if climate remained steady, almost 10 percent of Bhutan’s glaciers would vanish within the next few decades.
What’s more, the amount of melt water coming off these glaciers could drop by 30 percent.
Rupper says increasing temperatures are just one culprit behind glacier retreat. A number of climate factors such as wind, humidity, precipitation and evaporation can affect how glaciers behave. With some Bhutanese glaciers as long as 13 miles, an imbalance in any of these areas can take them decades to completely respond.
“These particular glaciers have seen so much warming in the past few decades that they’re currently playing lots of catch up,” Rupper explains.
In fact, snowfall rates in Bhutan would need to almost double to avoid glacier retreat, but it’s not a likely scenario because warmer temperatures lead to rainfall instead of snow. If glaciers continue to lose more water than they gain, the combination of more rain and more glacial melt will increase the probability of flooding — which can be devastating to neighboring villages.
“Much of the world’s population is just downstream of the Himalayas,” Rupper points out. “A lot of culture and history could be lost, not just for Bhutan but for neighboring nations facing the same risks.”
To illustrate the likelihood of such an outcome, Rupper took her research one moderate step further. Her results show if temperatures were to rise just 1 degree Celsius, the Bhutanese glaciers would shrink by 25 percent and the annual melt water would drop by as much as 65 percent. With climate continuing to warm, such a prediction is not altogether unlikely, especially given the years it can take for glaciers to react to change.
To make more precise predictions for Bhutan, Rupper and BYU graduate students Landon Burgener and Josh Maurer joined researchers from Columbia University, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, NASA and Bhutan’s Department of Hydro-Meteorological Services. Together, they trekked through rainforests and barren cliffs to reach some of the world’s most remote blocks of ice. There they placed a weather station and glacier monitoring equipment that can be used to gather real-time data in the months and years to follow.
“It took seven days just to get to the target glacier,” Rupper recounts, having returned in October. “For our pack animals, horsemen and guides, that terrain and elevation are a way of life, but I’ll admit the westerners in the group were a bit slower-moving.”
Rupper’s forecasts and fieldwork are among the first to look at glaciers in Bhutan, and the government hopes to use her research to make long-term decisions about the nation’s water resources and flooding hazards.
“They could potentially have a better idea of where best to fortify homes or build new power plants,” Rupper says. “Hopefully, good science can lead to good engineering solutions for the changes we’re likely to witness in the coming decades.”
No snow, no glacier. Up in those mountains, it’s plenty cold enough to snow. I’d think moisture patterns would have the biggest effect on snowfall, not temperature. But still, it’s worse than we thought, whatever happens.
Sounds like fun field work. Bound to get her annual research trips to Bhutan for a decade or so, provided the prognosis is drastic enough…
Kurt in Switzerland
Did I misunderstand this, or does she imply that shrinking glaciers will cause a drop off in melt water? Do they shrink by subliming as opposed to melting?
\\Bhutanese glaciers would shrink by 25 percent and the annual melt water would drop by as much as 65 percent//
As superficial as this story is, there is a lot less here than meets the eye. The annual melt water increases as glaciers shrink. Elsewhere the story talks of flooding as the glaciers shrink from increased rain/snow.
The point about a time-lag between changes in temperature, snow-fall rates and glacier growth is solid.
That point, however, got lost in the PR recasting of the speculative underpinning a research project to fund a Himalayian adventure to plant a weather station or two with no fewer than five organizations on the trek. How many GRL authors does it take to screw in a weather station?
Summer Rupper – must be conclusive.
Check.
What???
OK just kidding, I know these are the experts and I’m no glaciologist.
What I find peculiar about the Himalayan glaciers and all this future rain is:
Phew, it’s a good thing the hottest decade on the record has, so far at least, kept it stable or is that unstable? I’m getting a headache. 🙁
On a similar note, here’s a new film…
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20121114/REVIEWS/121119995
“Summer Rupper”? This is a joke isn’t it? If not, at least her parents had a sense of humour!
“The northern region of the country consists of an arc of Eastern Himalayan alpine shrub and meadows reaching up to glaciated mountain peaks with an extremely cold climate at the highest elevations. Most peaks in the north are over 7,000 m (23,000 ft) above sea level; the highest point in Bhutan is Gangkhar Puensum at 7,570 metres (24,840 ft), which has the distinction of being the highest unclimbed mountain in the world.”
Wikipedia.
Now what I’m struggling to understand is that these mountains are very high, let’s assume that the lapse rate is 2C/1000 feet, and that the temperature on the ground in the Summer is 20C in the Himalayas, and the glaciers are at 12,000 feet, and above then the temperature of the glaciers at 12000 feet will be -4C, below freezing. So why are they retreating? The only reason they can be retreating is lack of snow if my, rather crude, outline of the geopgraphy is correct. But if we are in a warming world then the physics tells us that there will be more water vapour in the atmosphere, which inevitaby should lead to increased precipitiation, which should come as snow at around 10,000 ft and above for all mountains across the globe. Or have I got it wrong? If there’s anyone out there who can set me straight I’d appreciate it.
Well some prediction, based on what?The sensors have just been installed but Rupper predicts, if temps stay steady, ice will melt. Based on first field work to look at Bhutan Glaciers. And if temperatures fall? If wind cycles behave normally and adjust to ocean cycles? If these glaciers have been retreating since the little ice age then yes melting might continue, but as there is no previous field work, how would we know? All this press release lacks is invocation of computer models and it will be perfect IPCC tabloid journalism.
Since reading the CRU emails this is my default reaction to any climatology, trust once lost is gone. Curious that the clergy was advising BBC on how to present this religion, professional courtesy or jealous sabotage? Inquiring minds might wonder? On second read a wiff of models is present in the , if temps rise 1 degree. Call me cynical, but as geologists are a profession most likely to mock CAWG and its pseudo evidence, maybe the proggs have launched a recruitment program amongst the junior ranks .
Post modern science is , know answer- find data to suit.
“If glaciers continue to lose more water than they gain, the combination of more rain and more glacial melt will increase the probability of flooding…”
“Her results show if temperatures were to rise just 1 degree Celsius, the Bhutanese glaciers would shrink by 25 percent and the annual melt water would drop by as much as 65 percent.”
I am having trouble squaring these two statements. Flooding or less water which is it?
The abstract says:
Is that warming caused by co2 or soot? I only wonder because Bhutan is 8,000 feet above sea level and I see these two papers mention atmospheric warming due to aerosols and soot ice placebo effects.
I found the last paragraph to be very encouraging, No daft ideas on how to eliminate the glacial melt but instead a hope for Scientists & Engineers to aid Bhutan’s population in adapting to their situation… A step in the right direction perhaps?
In for a penny, Bhutan, that’s the place where last year “scientists” discovered a breeding pair of tigers above the altitude line where they said they couldn’t survive! When it was discovered via remote camera, not one ruddy scientists came on terrestrial tv to say, “sorry folks, we got it wrong!” Just wouldn’t do you know, would it, to apologise for getting expert jusdgement wrong I mean, what would people think?
Glaciers are the result of a wrestling match between winter precipitation and summer temperatures. The latter doesn’t have to be higher if the former is lower to get shrinkage.
“These particular glaciers have seen so much warming in the past few decades that they’re currently playing lots of catch up,”
Except that there has been no warming for 16 years…
“Snowfall rates in Bhutan would need to almost double to avoid glacier retreat, but it’s not a likely scenario because warmer temperatures lead to rainfall instead of snow.
Well, that really depends on whether the temperature is actually above freezing now, doesn’t it.
This “What’s more, the amount of melt water coming off these glaciers could drop by 30 percent.” + this “the combination of more rain and more glacial melt will increase the probability of flooding” = She’s right no matter what happens. Convenient no?
Her results show, that if something that is not going to happen, happens, things could get ugly… So send more money.
Like I said before, the Wisconsionian glacier shrunk from Racine/Kenosha county (yes, that ’70’s Show) back to above the arctic circle. OMG, what melted that last major glacier in the western hemisphere? Not mastedon flatulence. Not coal plants. Not humans. The sun. Duh.
Even at high altitudes glaciers will ablate during the summer, and if it’s dry enough a proportion of this will be by sublimation. With warming then the glaciers will retreat.
Bhutan is the same latitude as Florida.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t there been a net shrinkage of the Himalayan glaciers that goes back – oh – about 11,000 years to the Upper Dryas? It will continue until it enters a phase of net growth, or until all the glaciers are gone like the Appalachian glaciers.
Logic fail…
And it still reminds me of the situation here in Calgary – the river we get our water from is fed by glaciers. Some years ago we were told that we should use less water to conserve the glaciers. The only way this could possibly make sense is if our municipal water supply was somehow directly melting the glaciers to obtain water.
And seriously… “A lot of culture and history could be lost”…? Washed away by the meltwater floods? Or abandoned due to water shortage? People could at least be consistent in their panic mongering…
A lot of speculation and, with the exception of the glacier monitoring station, not much science. She just assumes the warming which has leveled off will re-commence at some point. What if it cools, though? Then, the meltwater rates would drop as well. Would they really prefer glaciers to grow?
So why are they retreating?
The South Asian brown cloud gets pulled northward over the Himalayas by the Monsoon and black carbon gets precipitated out as snow (brown snow if you like). Lower albedo than normal snow that not only melts faster, but leaves a black carbon layer on the surface of older snow/ice and melts that.
Glaciers in Bhutan are south facing, with high levels of solar insolation. So they are particularly susceptible to black carbon,decreased albedo melting.
Across the Himalayas, glaciers that don’t get their precipitation from the Monsoon and are north facing are mostly stable with many advancing.
http://www.ualberta.ca/~eec/Scherler_2011_Nature_Geoscience.pdf
“Come rain or shine, or even snow, some glaciers of the Himalayas will continue shrinking for many years to come.”
Perhaps. Meanwhile, those in the western corner, some 230 in all, have been holding steady, or growing the past few decades. Other glaciers world-wide are also growing, including in Alaska, California, Norway, France, Switzerland, New Zealand and Russia.
Alarmists never like to mention those.
“With climate continuing to warm.
Might have been a good idea to check, before writing that.