Himalayan glaciers not melting because of climate change, report finds
Himalayan glaciers are actually advancing rather than retreating, claims the first major study since a controversial UN report said they would be melted within quarter of a century.
From the Telegraph By Dean Nelson, New Delhi and Richard Alleyne
Researchers have discovered that contrary to popular belief half of the ice flows in the Karakoram range of the mountains are actually growing rather than shrinking.
The discovery adds a new twist to the row over whether global warming is causing the world’s highest mountain range to lose its ice cover.
It further challenges claims made in a 2007 report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the glaciers would be gone by 2035.
Full story at the Telegraph here, (h/t to many readers) below is the science behind the story.
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From University of California, Santa Barbara: Scientists Find that Debris on Certain Himalayan Glaciers May Prevent Melting
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– A new scientific study shows that debris coverage –– pebbles, rocks, and debris from surrounding mountains –– may be a missing link in the understanding of the decline of glaciers. Debris is distinct from soot and dust, according to the scientists.
Melting of glaciers in the Himalayan Mountains affects water supplies for hundreds of millions of people living in South and Central Asia. Experts have stated that global warming is a key element in the melting of glaciers worldwide.
Bodo Bookhagen, assistant professor in the Department of Geography at UC Santa Barbara, co-authored a paper on this topic in Nature Geoscience, published this week. The first author is Dirk Scherler, Bookhagen’s graduate student from Germany, who performed part of this research while studying at UCSB.
“With the aid of new remote-sensing methods and satellite images, we identified debris coverage to be an important contributor to glacial advance and retreat behaviors,” said Bookhagen. “This parameter has been almost completely neglected in previous Himalayan and other mountainous region studies, although its impact has been known for some time.”
The finding is one more element in a worldwide political controversy involving global warming. “Controversy about the current state and future evolution of Himalayan glaciers has been stirred up by erroneous reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),” according to the paper.
“There is no ‘stereotypical’ Himalayan glacier,” said Bookhagen. “This is in clear contrast to the IPCC reports that lumps all Himalayan glaciers together.”
Bookhagen noted that glaciers in the Karakoram region of Northwestern Himalaya are mostly stagnating. However, glaciers in the Western, Central, and Eastern Himalaya are retreating, with the highest retreat rates –– approximately 8 meters per year –– in the Western Himalayan Mountains. The authors found that half of the studied glaciers in the Karakoram region are stable or advancing, whereas about two-thirds are in retreat elsewhere throughout High Asia. This is in contrast to the prevailing notion that all glaciers in the tropics are retreating.
Bookhagen explained the difference between debris and coverage by soot and dust on glaciers: “The debris cover has the opposite effect of soot and dust on glaciers. Debris coverage thickness above 2 centimeters, or about a half an inch, ‘shields’ the glacier and prevents melting. This is the case for many Himalayan glaciers that are surrounded by towering mountains that almost continuously shed pebbles, debris, and rocks onto the glacier.”
Thus, glaciers in the steep Himalaya are not only affected by temperature and precipitation, but also by debris coverage, and have no uniform and less predictable response, explained the authors. The debris coverage may be one of the missing links to creating a more coherent picture of glacial behavior throughout all mountains. The scientists contrast this Himalayan glacial study with glaciers from the gently dipping, low-relief Tibetan Plateau that have no debris coverage. Those glaciers behave in a different way, and their frontal changes can be explained by temperature and precipitation changes.
Bookhagen described results of another of his recent studies on this topic. He said that one of the key findings was that the Western Himalaya, including the Indus catchment and regions in Northern Pakistan and Northwestern India, depend heavily on seasonal snow and glacial melt waters, while Central Himalayan regions –– Western India and Nepal –– mostly depend on monsoonal rainfall.
The smaller seasonal water storage space in the Central Himalaya, which has only steep glaciers and no large snow fields, makes this region much more vulnerable to shifts in monsoonal strength and to glacial melting, explained Bookhagen. River discharge in these regions is crucial to sustain agriculture, hydropower, and drinking water. If the Indian monsoon season is weaker because of global atmospheric changes such as El Niño, then Central Nepal must primarily rely on water coming from the seasonal melting of glaciers and the small amount of snowmelt that is available.
“Retreating glaciers, and thus a reduction of seasonal water storage in this region, have a large impact on hundreds of millions of people living in the downstream section of these rivers,” said Bookhagen. “The mitigation and adaptation strategies in the Himalaya Mountains thus need to take into account the spatial climatic and topographic variability. There is no regional solution, but only different local strategies to the future water shortage. The geographic setting of High Asia poses political difficulties as future water treaties need to be carefully evaluated.”
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Forgive my ignorance, but wouldn’t the covering of debris reduce the albedo effect, and the larger debris act as heat islands after a day’s sun, both leading to an increase in melting?
Nice to read some facts, a pleasant change from the IPCC’s usual misrepresantions.
I had the same thought as grumpy old man though I’m a tail end baby boomer (too young yet to be old).
Grumpy: The debris layer acts as insulation. The effect also occurs in ground temperature.
In western Canada, for instance, the ground temperature below 2 meters, is a very good approximation to the average yearly temperature (about 40 deg F).
The upper soil acts a blanket. As long as there are no longer term changes, the underlying temperature stays constant.
The same principle would apply to glaciers. Besides acting as a blanket, and regulating temperature to the year round average, debris would also eliminate sublimation from direct sunlight.
Grumpy Old Man
Perhaps if the debris were thick and the heat didn’t reach the glacier…
MikeEE
I should have mentioned…
It may be like permafrost. If the average temperature stays below freezing, then the permafrost (glacier) doesn’t melt.
MikeEE
It would depend on the nature of the debris, most high Himalayan rocks are sedimentary, and many are carbonates, these are light colored. Also at altitudes where Himalayan glaciers are found, the night time temperatures would be pretty low in high summer, so debris could easily act as an insulator, protecting the ice from daytime melting.
I am no expert on the Himalayas, but these would be my first hypotheses
So, do I need all this white paint, or not?
The statement “Himalayan glaciers are actually advancing rather than retreating” doesn’t appear in either the press release by the university or the abstract of the paper in the science journal.
This appears to be the Telegraph’s interpretation which does not seem to be sufficiently born out by the evidence to be made the one feature that is pulled out as a sub-headline.
It’s a good news story – we’re getting better understanding of what does and does not influence glacier melt. To headline it to imply that no glaciers in the Himalayas are melting is misleading as the press release clearly states “Bookhagen noted that glaciers in the Karakoram region of Northwestern Himalaya are mostly stagnating. However, glaciers in the Western, Central, and Eastern Himalaya are retreating, with the highest retreat rates –– approximately 8 meters per year –– in the Western Himalayan Mountains”.
Actually scientists have known the Glaciers in this area have been expanding since the 1990’s
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1659/0276-4741(2005)025%5B0332:TKAGEA%5D2.0.CO;2?cookieSet=1&prevSearch=
But of course it’s not the only area where Glaciers didn’t get the memo from the IPCC
http://ak.water.usgs.gov/glaciology/hubbard/
Now what does the USGS say is the most important thing when dealing with Glacier Advance and Retreat?
I beg to disagree, there are plenty of previous studies in mountain regions:
http://iahs.info/redbooks/264-authors.htm
I think we should make a difference between what the IPCC says about glaciers and what actual glaciologists do.
The debris get warmer, but if the layer is thick enough the ice underneath is insulated and the melt reduced.
Fascinating. For comparison, a quick look at Google earth shows the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets as pristine white with almost no debris, according to the satellite imagery.
Anthony Watts says:
Researchers have discovered that contrary to popular belief half of the ice flows in the Karakoram range of the mountains are actually growing rather than shrinking.
No they haven’t. From the press release that you quote in full: “The authors found that half of the studied glaciers in the Karakoram region are stable or advancing”
Half are actually retreating, of the remaining 50% only some of them are actually growing.
Anthony Wattssays:
The discovery adds a new twist to the row over whether global warming is causing the world’s highest mountain range to lose its ice cover.
What it actually does is provide an explanation for an anomaly already noted in The IPCC’s Forth Assessment: “Whereas glaciers in the Asian high mountains have generally shrunk at varying rates (Su and Shi, 2002; Ren et al., 2004; Solomina et al., 2004; Dyurgerov and Meier, 2005), several high glaciers in the central Karakoram are reported to have advanced and/or thickened at their tongues (Hewitt, 2005), probably due to enhanced precipitation. “
REPLY: You might want to see who’s saying what before quoting. That’s the Telegraph article, not me. I provided the press release so that people could read exactly what was learned, so please don’t try to m make it look like I’m saying something I did not. – Anthony
Obviously the Himalayan glaciers are ‘deniers’ in the pay of Big Oil and should not be referred to again in climate discussions.
The debris prevets sun’s rays from hitting the ice directly. The debris heats up, but it looses most of the heat to the cold atmosphere and transmits only a small part to the ice.
It is even worse than I thought…
Ecotretas
Grumpy Old Man: I think the words “‘shields’ the glacier” should be replaced with “‘insulates’ the glacier”.
OT – but take a look at the Aqua Channel 5v2 tropospheric temperatures. They’ve fallen off the map. January 24th shows 1.15F below this date last year. Will be interesting to see the January UAH Temperature update.
Kevin MacDonald says:
January 27, 2011 at 4:04 am …..
Of course, if you had bothered to follow the links, or even read the post properly, you would have found that this is “from the Telegraph By Dean Nelson, New Delhi and Richard Alleyne” and not what “Anthony Watts says”.
.
This bit of information re: debris is not really that new, I read a paper last year or maybe the year before, that was suggesting using debris to:
1) Protect Glaciers
2) Grow them a bit
3) Even Create them scratch
Sadly, given all the Stuff that’s been written since, I’m having a little trouble googling it. Does, this ring any bells with anyone else? Anyone got a link perhaps?
I walked up this very glacier, the Baltero, about ten years ago.
The debris layer is very thick, at least half a meter, even on the upper reaches of the glacier, and very rarely do you ever walk on any ice – only when there are folds and crevaces. Most of the rubble rocks are red sandstone-limestones. The surface of the glacier is a bit like Mars. Lower sections are highly distorted and difficult to climb, while the upper section is flat and like walking on a boulder-covered beach (most of the boulders are in the 30-40 cm range, but there is obviously a lot of gravel and many man-sized boulders ).
Our guide pointed out that the main glacier had retreated, but as we went up, he also pointed out all the sub-glaciers that had advanced. More than half were advancing, apparently.
Daytime temperatures were burning hot, even in September, but being a steep valley the sun-time was very short, and the nights were very cold (Anthony will recognise the classic Katobatic airflow). I was surprised to find crows and geese able to fly there, at 20,000 feet. Even the Pakistani army helicopters were struggling at that altitude (with the crews on oxygen) so I was surprised that birds could cope.
.
The headline, and lead:
“Himalayan glaciers not melting because of climate change, report finds
Himalayan glaciers are actually advancing rather than retreating, claims the first major study since a controversial UN report said they would be melted within quarter of a century.” ,
are not justified by the text of the press release from the University. What I read is that a portion of the glaciers in the Himalaya’s are not retreating because they are insulated by debris. The majority of glaciers are retreating. The press release does not contradict the idea that climate change is melting glaciers.
I’m sorry but, after reading this, there something missing from the report, either by bad editing or incomplete reporting regarding glacial melt, snow cover, and the water supply. For instance, the report says:
The smaller seasonal water storage space in the Central Himalaya, which has only steep glaciers and no large snow fields, makes this region much more vulnerable to shifts in monsoonal strength and to glacial melting, explained Bookhagen. River discharge in these regions is crucial to sustain agriculture, hydropower, and drinking water. If the Indian monsoon season is weaker because of global atmospheric changes such as El Niño, then Central Nepal must primarily rely on water coming from the seasonal melting of glaciers and the small amount of snowmelt that is available.
“Retreating glaciers, and thus a reduction of seasonal water storage in this region, have a large impact on hundreds of millions of people living in the downstream section of these rivers…”
Is the report saying that there is less snow falling in certain areas? Just what is meant by smaller seasonal water storage space—does not, for example, a 100 sq mile Himalayan mountain range have MORE surface area (space) than 100 sq miles of plains? Does the fact that it is steep mean that it gets less snowfall? Wouldn’t snow accumulate more at valley bottoms than on the slopes because of this physiographic fact? Then again, maybe it’s just me…
The title of this post says “Himilayan”. Perhaps Anthony would correct it.
Sue: While you are correct that Kevin made an attribution error, the facts he provides are quite relevant and expose the Telegraph’s distortions. And it is clear AW quoted this material sympathetically.