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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I’m concerned about my impact on the environment. I heat my home with heating oil but am worried about what this is doing to the environment. I live in a rural area of lincolnshire so there’s not much alternative to heating my home with oil except wood and LPG… but I don’t know if this is even more harmful.
I have just found a heating oil website who offer Group Buying Days, this seems like a great way to help the environment because you can order with others which helps to keep tankers off the roads more, reducing CO2 emissions.
I would like to see more information on the internet about the effects of heating oil on the environment. On most climate change sites I go on there are articles on gas and electric heating but little on the effects of heating oil.
Does anyone have any figures about heating oil and ways to minimize my impact on the environment?
Perhaps you’ve seen this before and this is off topic but a highly talented off the cuff speaker provides a great demonstration of the current relationship of AGW climate science and government.
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQPL2nfPaQQ ]
David L says:
January 27, 2011 at 8:05 am
Has anyone compiled a list of AGW “facts” that have turned out to be false?
Yes David, it’s called the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report!
REPLY: No, in your case it is purposely and willfully misquoting me, even when your error is pointed out, by your own words, you will continue. It’s one thing to disagree, it’s quite another to create a lie of attribution, and continue the lie of attribution when called on it, simply because you disagree. So yes, you are a troll.
And in the issue you cite above, complaining that I made a mistake of attribution, you conveniently neglect to point out that as soon as I was aware of it, I corrected it, and attributed it to John Bruno:
Addendum: I should add that what is doubly insulting to me is that the author of the content on John Cook’s website, John Bruno, came up to me after my presentation in Brisbane, where he acted as compatriot to Ove Hoegh-Guldberg (which John Bruno runs the website “climateshifts” of) who made a fool of himself by abusing his rights as an audience member. Bruno told me how he respected my tone and my right to say it. He also said to me that I seemed “more open” than other people he’s talked to that are on the skeptical side.
You on the other want to willfully continue, and that’s the problem and that why you are binned now. Whether you get out of the bin is up to you and how you behave in the future.
I wasn’t complaining about your “mistake of attribution” because I couldn’t be sure you’d made one. At the time you certainly didn’t admit to it, claiming you were justified in damning Cook with Bruno’s words:
dana1981 says:
September 27, 2010 at 8:43 am
You should have paid more attention, Watts. The author of that article is John Bruno, an Associate Professor of Marine Ecology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
http://www.climateshifts.org/?page_id=3850
REPLY: I’m aware of this, but as people routinely point out to me, I’m responsible for my own blog content. The fact that Cook allows this in any main post is the issue. I’ve made a note in parenthesis to make it a bit clearer – Anthony
My only aim in citing it was to show precedence for my own behaviour, and I fail to see how adopting a tactic endorsed by the sites owner can be described as trolling.
REPLY: Well that’s where we differ. I admit and fix my error, you willfully create an error where none existed and continue with it for spite – Anthony
In an attempt to increase the melt rate of the glaciers providing water to the Aral Sea (a long forgotten eco-disaster) the Soviets planned to spread soot.
The error in all these comments and the original paper is that movement at the snout of the glacier is a function of plastic flow within the glacier and only marginally to the debris field at the snout. The snout is very dirty because material that falls on the ice is transported through the flowing plastic layers to emerge at the snout. There is a record of a Swiss soldier who fell into a crevasse emerging 400 years later at the snout.
As long as the ice is deep enough (normally 50 m) then the ice in the lower layer becomes plastic under the pressure and heat created by the weight of the ice. Above this Plastic Layer of ice is the Brittle layer that cracks when the plastic layer flows over underlying rock protrusions or steps to create crevasses. As long as the conditions exist for the plastic layer to flow downhill then the glacier is advancing. If the delivery of ice to the snout is faster than the melt rate at the snout then the glacier is considered to be advancing. If it is less, then the glacier is said to be retreating. However, the Plastic Layer is still flowing down slope. I explain that glaciers don’t retreat, they advance to the rear.
The rate at which the plastic flow moves is primarily determined by the depth of the ice, which is in turn determined by the snowfall above what is called the Firn Line. So glaciers advance and retreat is as much determined by changing snowfall as it is by melt rate at the snout.
The other major mechanism for a glacier to advance is a change in the basal melt rate. A thin layer of water exists between the bottom of the ice and the bedrock. If this layer of water increases it creates a more rapid advance of the snout and the glacier is called a “galloping glacier”. If this occurs and the rate is significant it draws glaciologist from all over the world. I was in Whitehorse years ago when the Donjek glacier suddenly started to surge. The hotels filled very quickly.
A couple of years ago there were reports of increased ice breaking off the Baffin Island glacier. It was attributed to global warming. What nobody noticed was that snowfall rates had increased significantly for several years prior. The same is true in Antarctica.
Kilimanjaro the favourite Gore global warming glacier was affected by increased dirt deposits and decreased snowfall, both a function of drought in the area. The temperature records showed no signs of warming.
This entire kerfuffle is another example of the generalist nature of climate science when a singular event is taken out of its specialist context and misused to mislead for political gain.
David L says:
January 27, 2011 at 8:05 am
Has anyone compiled a list of AGW “facts” that have turned out to be false?
Yes.
I believe it’s called the Internet.
Seriously, here is one list of the things caused by GW:
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
I believe all have been debunked, but the “Alligators in the Thames” might still be under investigation.
(grin)
“”””” izen says:
January 27, 2011 at 9:45 am
So once you filter out the Telegraph re-write…. “””””
All of what you point out izen is true. These authors have simply pointed out that not ALL glaciers (in the Himalayas) are retreating, and they offer a physical reason that points to why some aren’t. In no way do they intimate that the “concensus” view of retreat is false; just that they see a previously largely unreported aspect of some glaciers that indicates why they may not be retreating. It’s a very benign study and report ; it adds knowledge we previously didn’t have (most of us).
While I can’t claim to be a glacier expert, I have climbed on many glaciers (Tibet, Nepal, Mexico and Alaska.) The explanations given make sense. A thin layer of soot will materially lower the albedo, but no material insulation effect, so will increase melt rates. A thin layer of debris will act similarly, but with much less effect due to higher albedo (than soot, higher than ice). However, the movement of glaciers picks up a lot of debris as the move. At first, the debris may increase the melt rate, but as the ice melts, and the debris does not, the top of the debris field becomes thicker and thicker. While it still has a higher albedo than ice,, that is offset by the insulation effect.
It should be easy enough to prove, especially if you live in the northeast where we got yet another load of snow. Make three large piles of snow. Leave one uncovered, put a think layer of dirt on a second, and a couple inches of dirt on the third. Let the sun act, and you should find the second one melting the fastest, but the one with the thick later will be melting the slowest.
Slightly OT, am I right that 2011 seems to have brought with it a new ill-tempered approach to blog posts (the thread above, tav, his grace etc). What gives? Just happenstance, or is it concerted?
Addendum to my coment above: the OSU researchers found (by actual in-the-field measurement) that a debris field several meters thick protected the glacier from melting. The ice bulge reportedly moved down with the glacier movement like a pig that had been swallowed by a python.
Scherler’s team pored over satellite images of 286 glaciers throughout the Himalayas. Collected between 2000 and 2008, they showed a consistent trend everywhere except the Karakoram, In this range, it seems, rocky rubble eroded from uphill peaks serves to decouple the effects of regional warming from glacial retreats.
Karakoram Range Karakoram Range is situated in the regions of Gilgit, Baltistan and Ladakh and has the 2nd second highest peak of the world (8,611 m, or 28,244 ft) called as K2.
Didn`t they look at Sikkim which has the 3rd highest peak in the world at (8598 mtrs), that`s 13 mtrs less than K2 and 84 glaciers which are GROWING.
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/Glaciersgrowing.jpg
In Landmass Sikkim covers only 0.5 percent of India’s total landmass, though the size of the state is small compared to other states in the country this small state has 84 glaciers. In the last six years studies show that ice caps in the state have grown about four times. Of the many glaciers in Sikkim, the most famous prominent and most famous of all is Zemu Glacier. It is the largest glacier in Eastern Himalayas.
file:///E:/New%20folder/Zemu%20Glacier%20%C2%AB%20Sikkim%20Tourism.htm
http://www.sikkiminfo.net/physical_features.htm
Phil says:
“It should be easy enough to prove, especially if you live in the northeast where we got yet another load of snow. Make three large piles of snow. Leave one uncovered, put a think layer of dirt on a second, and a couple inches of dirt on the third. Let the sun act, and you should find the second one melting the fastest, but the one with the thick later will be melting the slowest.”
And how big a grant did Mr Pachauri want to do this work?
So over the next 35 years (oops 350) years that these glaciers are predicted to melt by the IPCC they expect no changes in the monsoon’s moisture that will effect locally the growth or retreat of these glaciers. Have these new studies incorporated the new glacial isostatic adjustments that resulted in much lower ice loss projections in Greenland and Antarctica? It looks like it has changed for the Himalayas.
http://thegwpf.org/cache/multithumb_images/3399907772.png
New is on the left and old is on the right
Ken Lowe,
“Does anyone have any figures about heating oil and ways to minimize my impact on the environment?”
Your concern for the environment is commendible. It’s just a pity that your concern has been hijacked by the non issue of co2. Instead of this, think about overfishing, deforestation, illegal trade in animal products, fertilizer runoffs, endangered species. Any small step taken in any of these areas will count far more than how many kilogrammes of co2 you put into the air – which is actually good for the biosphere.
REPLY: Well then, ever since this comment, I’m comfortable automatically attributing every comment of yours to the bit bucket – Anthony
Hooray! He was beginning to annoy me.
Gil Dewart says:
January 27, 2011 at 11:28 am
Addendum to my coment above: the OSU researchers found (by actual in-the-field measurement) that a debris field several meters thick protected the glacier from melting.
For decades people in Minnesota, Wisconson etc knew if you covered ice with straw, dirt etc and kept in a “root cellar” you could keep ice all year round. So what is so suprising about OSU or any researcher finding out that glaciers can be protected from melting by debris.
Ken Love
“Does anyone have any figures about heating oil and ways to minimize my impact on the environment?”
Ken, have you considered moving to southern Europe? As part of the EU it is now much easier to move about. There have been many mass migrations in Europe in the past due to climate disruption. You would do the planet a favor by not having to burn as much fuel yearly as you do now. While nobody is sure about the climate in the long term there is mounting evidence that Northern Europe will be unusually cold for the next twenty to thirty years. If you have a lap top you can live anywhere so why not on the shores of the Mediteranean.
George E. Smith says:
January 27, 2011 at 9:53 am
…I’m not going to argue that glacial regions aren’t generally in retreat. I think that always happens when earth emerges from an ice age; and likely continues till it enters into another one.
That’s an interesting thought that I’ve often had; that during an interglacial the glaciers are generally in retreat. But what is the trigger for the onset of the next ice age? Could it be a lack of ice cover in the arctic with the consequent year round loss of ocean heat to space?
Anthony states that his blog is about ‘”Commentary on puzzling things …”
Perhaps Anthony could head off this whole problem (“I’ve felt comfortable attributing every piece of nonsense that appears here to Anthony.”) by providing his OWN commentary and opinion on the topics he posts. Then we would indeed know which opinions to attribute to Anthony and which opinions are being uncritically passed on from others.
A quick look back at recent posts shows a significant majority are guest posts or links to other articles with little or no commentary. By posting them, the implication is that Anthony agrees (but gives an easy out when the article or guest blog is criticized). When pressed above, Anthony himself seems to disavow any agreement, support, or analysis of the things he posts — ‘”I provided the press release so that people could read exactly what was learned, so please don’t try to make it look like I’m saying something I did not.” Anthony did NOT say if he agrees with the article. He did NOT say if he thinks it is accurately written. He did NOT say if he had looked into the actual paper. The silence seems oddly out of place in a blog focused on “Commentary”.
Furthermore, when did a press release EVER explain “exactly what was learned”? Even worse are news articles based on press releases by reporters who don’t understand the subject published in newspapers which have their own agendas. If the goal was indeed to let us know know “exactly what was learned” the discussion should be about the actual paper, and there should be a chance for the authors (or other experts) who DO know what was going on to provide input.
REPLY: Perhaps you could try juggling a young family, managing a business, doing a daily radio program, and running the world’s most visited blog about climate (un-sponsored, and unpaid, unlike Joe Romm’s Climate Progress which is ALL about his view, paid for by Soros funded Center For American Progress – an over $30 million a year operation), and see if you can provide commentary with articles that you are posting from work each and every time. If you think you can do a better job than I, by all means start your own blog under these conditions and prove me wrong. In the meantime, I will continue to post news items, with commentary when I have time and I can add something, and without commentary when I don’t. Given the choice of posting nothing, or posting something for people to read and discuss, I’ll opt for the latter. Many like yourself and troller Kevin MacDonald don’t care for my opinion when I give it anyway.
As for the press releases, I’ve long argued that each one should include the paper with the PR. Sadly they don’t. Why not direct your angst towards making that happen when these universities and NGO’s publish a press release? OR, alternately, if you’d like to provide me the money for a budget to subscribe to a number of major journals, then I might be able to have them available.
You and some others make all sorts of assertions about what I should do, but never contribute anything yourself except complaints.
– Anthony
eadler:
The majority of glaciers are retreating. The press release does not contradict the idea that climate change is melting glaciers.
eadler, AGW implies B does not mean that B implies AGW. Moreover, since B in this case is the prevailing notion that all glaciers in the tropics are retreating according to erroneous reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), then because B is apparently not happening, AGW isn’t either, at least in regard to the Himalayan glaciers.
Now, cutting B back to “the majority of glaciers are retreating” is something the ipcc could and probably should have done right from the start, since it must have known it really had no idea what it was talking about; except it probably reasoned that the “majority retreating” would have are harder time being distinguished from a “no change” climate, but especially from being the distinctive work of Space Aliens!
sources from the main blog post:
“There is no ‘stereotypical’ Himalayan glacier,” said Bookhagen. “This is in clear contrast to the IPCC reports that lumps all Himalayan glaciers together.”
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.
“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.
George E. Smith says:
January 27, 2011 at 9:41 am
“”””” Jimbo says:
…………….
“There’s that simulation word again.”
————
Hi George,
You are right to be worried about simulation. Here are some non-simulations of soot.
http://news-releases.uiowa.edu/2010/july/072710global-warming.html
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/himalayan-soot.html
Bill Marsh said on January 27, 2011 at 5:37 am:
Not that off topic, since (C)AGW keeps getting cited as why the glaciers are all disappearing.
Graph it with the Average. Jan 24 is 0.25°C colder than the global Average, and you can see how far below the global Average line the year has been so far. I’m assuming “Average” is for the satellite record, which would mean that for a long stretch where there’s no noticeable global warming, what we now have is even colder than that. The Sea Surface Temperatures are also mildly interesting. For Jan 25 it’s an entire 0.04°C warmer than 2008, the low point. If someone wants to make a case for global warming off of those temps, given how the year has been going, they’re going to have a pretty tough time.
This of course explains why ABC News (US) was kindly explaining a few days ago how Climate Scientists™ have a new theory for how Global Warming has lead to the record cold and snowfalls in the Northern Hemisphere. Apparently the decreasing Arctic Sea Ice, which is scheduled to disappear around 2030 leading to mass polar bear drownings, has affected the jet stream patterns leading to the cold dipping down from the Arctic across the US. ‘Like leaving the door open to the freezer’ or something like that was the sound bite from an esteemed Peer-Reviewed Climate Expert™.
Turn it around, that would mean when the Arctic is colder with lots of sea ice, as it will be after the Righteous Payback upon mankind brought about by the UN-enforced Global Carbon Regulating Regime to come, it acts to keep that cold close to itself. Thus after we convince the planet to cool down by reducing our emissions of plant food, and the Arctic Sea Ice extent returns to the historic highs of the Scientifically Acceptable historical records (satellite since 1979), we should have warmer and less-snowier winters than we’ve been experiencing.
This may sound like the same result we’ve been told to expect from unrestrained (C)AGW. But there are important differences. In one case we’ll still have all the glaciers still melting, as will be breathlessly reported by ABC News and other major news outlets. In the other those warmer and less-snowier Northern Hemisphere winters will be accompanied by all the glaciers no longer melting, and indeed they’ll likely all be growing again, which will be greeted with exuberant cheering by all the peasant people who live in their shadows and need the melt water to survive. And there’ll be more polar bears. Likely less humans, but more polar bears therefore it’ll all even out and be for the best.
There will also be a major ABC News special trumpeting the major impacts that journalists have had towards improving the human condition and how they have near single-handedly saved the planet from certain ruin, however when Saving The Earth there are some consequences that must be endured. ☺
Power generation from the Himalayan glaciers of SIKKIM INDIA.
With a rapidly growing population, increasing urbanisation and an ever-rising demand for power, the mighty rivers flowing down to the plains from the Himalayas are an attractive option for power generation. The government has targeted hydro schemes for huge growth.
The government aims to build 50GW of hydro-power projects. Most of these projects are in the Himalayan region and in the northeast part of India. Ironically, water flows in these areas are highly susceptible to changes due to global warming.
The Indian government’s determination to forge ahead with large-scale hydroelectric projects in the fragile Himalayan region defies warnings from climate scientists that the glaciers of the region are shrinking. The recent debacle over inaccurate figures in the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change report does not alter the trend of declining precipitation and shrinking glaciers.
The India government appear to believe the glaciers are here to stay.
http://www.thefifthestate.com.au/archives/10054
David L says:
January 27, 2011 at 8:05 am
Has anyone compiled a list of AGW “facts” that have turned out to be false?
——–
Here’s one. It is a little out-of-date, and the ‘hottest year’ still has not been ‘proven’ false, yet.
Climate Science Scandals – List Of Gates Balloons To 129
http://notrickszone.com/2010/12/07/climate-science-scandals-list-of-gates-balloons-to-129/
“”””” Robuk says:
January 27, 2011 at 11:30 am
Karakoram Range Karakoram Range is situated in the regions of Gilgit, Baltistan and Ladakh and has the 2nd second highest peak of the world (8,611 m, or 28,244 ft) called as K2. “””””
Some call it Mt Godwin Austen; we can’t have an important mountain without a proper name. I believe the experts say it is somewhat more challenging than Everest.