Essay by Eric Worrall
Enhanced mixing of air layers at high altitudes is apparently reducing maximum air temperatures in some parts of the Himalayas.
Scientists uncover surprising phenomenon in the Himalayas slowing the effects of climate change
By CNN 6:41pm Dec 13, 2023
Glaciers in the Himalayas are melting rapidly, but a new report showed an astonishing phenomenon in the world’s tallest mountain range could be helping to slow the effects of the global climate crisis.
When warming temperatures hit certain high-altitude ice masses, it sets off a surprising reaction that blows robust cold winds down the slopes, according to the study published December 4 in the journal Nature Geoscience.
…
At the base of Mount Everest, however, measurements of overall temperature averages appeared curiously stable instead of increasing.
A close analysis of the data revealed what was really happening.
“While the minimum temperatures have been steadily on the rise, the surface temperature maxima in summer were consistently dropping,” said Franco Salerno, coauthor of the report and researcher for the National Research Council of Italy, or CNR.
However, even the presence of these cooling winds is not enough to fully counteract increasing temperatures and glacier melt due to climate change.
…
“Katabatic winds are a common feature of Himalayan glaciers and their valleys, and have likely always occurred,” Pellicciotti said.
“What we observe however is a significant increase in intensity and duration of katabatic winds, and this is due to the fact that the surrounding air temperatures have increased in a warming world.”
…
Read more: https://www.9news.com.au/world/climate-change-news-himalayas-might-be-slowing-the-effects-of-climate-change/23097b04-cc8c-4f9e-be8e-9161417c4301
The abstract of the study;
Local cooling and drying induced by Himalayan glaciers under global warming
Franco Salerno, Nicolas Guyennon, Kun Yang, Thomas E. Shaw, Changgui Lin, Nicola Colombo, Emanuele Romano, Stephan Gruber, Tobias Bolch, Andrea Alessandri, Paolo Cristofanelli, Davide Putero, Guglielmina Diolaiuti, Gianni Tartari, Gianpietro Verza, Sudeep Thakuri, Gianpaolo Balsamo, Evan S. Miles & Francesca Pellicciotti
Nature Geoscience volume 16, pages 1120–1127 (2023)Cite this article
Abstract
Understanding the response of Himalayan glaciers to global warming is vital because of their role as a water source for the Asian subcontinent. However, great uncertainties still exist on the climate drivers of past and present glacier changes across scales. Here, we analyse continuous hourly climate station data from a glacierized elevation (Pyramid station, Mount Everest) since 1994 together with other ground observations and climate reanalysis. We show that a decrease in maximum air temperature and precipitation occurred during the last three decades at Pyramid in response to global warming. Reanalysis data suggest a broader occurrence of this effect in the glacierized areas of the Himalaya. We hypothesize that the counterintuitive cooling is caused by enhanced sensible heat exchange and the associated increase in glacier katabatic wind, which draws cool air downward from higher elevations. The stronger katabatic winds have also lowered the elevation of local wind convergence, thereby diminishing precipitation in glacial areas and negatively affecting glacier mass balance. This local cooling may have partially preserved glaciers from melting and could help protect the periglacial environment.
Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-023-01331-y
The maximum temperature trend may be cooling at -0.26C per decade at some stations, according to the study.
… Crucially, we find that the overall decreasing Tmax trend at Pyramidoff, particularly during the warm season, is correctly reproduced by ERA5-Land reanalysis (−0.026 ± 0.014 °C yr−1, P < 0.05, Fig. 1e,f), which reproduces the non-stationary patterns at the annual and monthly scale (Fig. 1c). …
Read more: Same link as above
The situation at higher altitudes seems to depend on whether the location is covered with ice, ice covered regions are cooler.
Note minimum temperatures, and some lower slopes appear to be warming. The study also mentioned more precipitation near the foot of glaciers.
The situation is also complex in terms of what is happening at higher altitudes, the study speculates greater layer mixing is causing stronger katabatic winds. The study doesn’t seem to suggest increased precipitation at higher altitudes, instead it reports an overall drying, which could negatively impact glacier mass. The study appears to suggest the drying is caused by increased downhill katabatic winds driving away the moist lowland air. The study mentions the vegetation line on the mountains is stable – not exactly what you would expect in a rapidly warming world – though the study mentions more observations are needed to confirm trends and hypothesis. There were significant gaps in the data which were filled using statistical techniques.
My interpretation, this study likely casts doubt on the wild predictions we’ve heard over the years about the disappearance of this or that snow field or glacier. The situation is obviously a lot more complex than a simple projection based on average global or regional temperature.
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You can’t trust a Climate Crisis to do the right thing
So, in other words instead of the glaciers in the Himalayas getting warmer and melting the way they forecast, areas in the Himalayas are actually getting colder. They were forecast to get warmer because of global warming. But since parts of the area are actually getting colder they are now saying that it is getting colder because of global warming. The pity of it is that people believe this crap.
By some measures. The average temperature may still be warming in many places, but the declining maximum temperature has a protective effect, though this may be partly counterbalanced by overall drying.
It’s complicated is the impression I got, not easy to predict.
But, if “The Science” was settled decades ago (before trillions spent to prevent it), why didn’t they already know this?
IOW, how does the famous 97% consensus fell about this?
You know it isn’t settled until they chime in.
/sarc
yuh, we’re told it was settled half a century ago and the Satanic oil companies knew all about it! /sarc
Are we looking at unforseen regional cooling effects, or an overall effect at this altitude level globally?
Regional I think, but it might apply to other mountains. It wasn’t clear how high a mountain has to be to trigger this layer mixing effect.
Well the top highest 188 mountains are in Asia, with the very tallest being in the Himalaya or Karakoram ranges, 189th being in the Andes. Presumably the characteristics are a very tall mountain (range) co-located with glacier(s). Time to start checking all the mountain ranges around Nepal.
Guess it doesn’t apply to Mt. Saint Helens where glaciers have been growing since they got reestablished after the 1980 eruption. The mountain is 8,362 ft. and the crater where the largest glacier is growing is at about 6,794 ft.
The crater glacier has been expanding at a rate of about 135 feet per year and adding 50 ft of depth per year.
Interesting, Thanks.
That sounds like UHI bias!
History has shown global warming activists have claimed just about everything is caused by global warming. It’s why they can’t state what observation would prove global warming isn’t happening.
Anything can happen and probably will.
There it happened – remember you saw it here fist.
Thanks for that. I was trying to think of a good way to say exactly that.
Interesting. In the Wall Street Journal today there was an article about how melting of a glacier on Everest, due to climate change, was forcing them to reroute hikers and maybe relocate base camp.
Base camp has so many heaters and cooking stoves that could be having an impact – smudging the glacier with soot, even direct heating
Do you know if they have composting toilets up there, or just shlt-pits?
(or anything at all? eeeewww 🙁 )
I was curious, so looked it up. Eeeewww was the answer.
But the summer Nepal trek to east Everest base camp is so popular that the Nepal government is building a modern latrine system even including some flush toilets.They don’t want to lose the trek revenues.
Twenty years ago, trekking up to the Annapurna range with two other teachers. The pilgrimage route we followed led up through many alpine hamlets where open sewers were not uncommon, and occasionally the main trail was rutted by the effluents draining down across the gravel. It was summertime, so monsoon season, and during the rains the stuff was getting flushed away. I was advised to stay away from the goat cheese and the yak butter tea, etc, so stuck to cooked chicken dishes. One day as we moseyed tourist-style through one of the villages, a toddler came out in diapers, pulled down and squatted right in the trail. He was followed by a group of “free range” chickens that gobbled it up as fast as he let loose.
This imparts a new perspective on the food you’re eating. And after a while i undersood the boy’s ugency all too well.
Plenty of glaciers visible from the passes above Muktinath – and avalanches occuring as we watched.
Thank you, thank you. Could we please go back to glaciers rather than discuss shit?
Lots of food value for some “other”, in what every creature ‘eliminates. Let us not get too ‘picky’.
what if you have to “go” at the top of Everest? That would be memorable. 🙂
“I planted my flag at the top of Everest”.
Is there a busier mountain anywhere else in the world?
Total madness on Everest –
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse4.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.-1v2p1Jy4qWfRRpvHOq_tgHaEK%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=9c0b0545f4c5de82d68d6ca599f812e6b73401be230068f68abd4befc30b5d82&ipo=images
&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=659b0d3408e31a0271d0fe247a6a9ab0050f921b5968b2a560149e74189c8e9d&ipo=images
That article described the meltwater ponds which partially freeze over at night. The video showed them crossing one of these. It’s interesting that the vertical faces of the glaciers around them heat up above 100 degrees in the afternoons during climbing season, then refreeze in subzero temps overnight. All the serious technical climbing has to be done while its still frozen. Must be “fun” to rouse yourself at 1 am with that ahead of you.
All the Himalayin climbing books describe the ice-covered cirques which focus the sunlight like a magnifying glass. High temps common even at arctic zones. Crevasses and meltwater pools also just common features of that landscape.
Wow, those suffering hikers- we shouldn’t put them through that misery- we must spend 200 trillion in the next decade to avoid that horrible fate. /sarc
Good posting of an illustration of how complex and even chaotic climate events are. The additional factor of katabatic winds (downhill winds of higher density due to being colder due to glacier interaction) is sublimation/ablation. This process, converting H2O from solid to gas without a liquid middle phase, has complex controls, and even more complex interactions with even small changes to ambient factors. Maybe it snows a lot, then the persons below, waiting for run-off to fill reservoirs, are surprised because a lot of the snow/ice goes into the atmosphere and enhances the down-wind countries rainfall – nothing fair about that! Good luck modelling the climate variables.
“counterintuitive cooling”? is caused by enhanced sensible heat exchange and the associated increase in glacier katabatic wind, which draws cool air downward from higher elevations.
Katabatic winds & Föehn winds & Chinook winds, what’s the difference? The reason asking is that the Black Hills of South Dakota are home to the world’s fastest recorded rise in temperature, a record that has held for nearly six decades caused by downslope winds.
On January 22, 1943, the northern and eastern slopes of the Black Hills were at the western edge of an Arctic airmass and under a temperature inversion. A layer of shallow Arctic air hugged the ground from Spearfish to Rapid City. At about 7:30am MST, the temperature in Spearfish was -4 degrees Fahrenheit. The chinook kicked in, and two minutes later the temperature was 45 degrees above zero. The 49 degree rise in two minutes set a world record that is still on the books. By 9:00am, the temperature had risen to 54 degrees. Suddenly, the chinook died down and the temperature tumbled back to -4 degrees. The 58 degree drop took only 27 minutes.
Downslope winds create heat not cooling.
Not all downslope winds are the same – the Chinook, Santa Ana and Foehn winds are slightly different in that they use an adiabatic process when they warm up, where the heat is a by-product of the increased pressure as the air mass moves downslope, with no other heat added or subtracted. The downslope wind mentioned in the above article involves a katabatic process where an air mass moving downslope over a cold surface is cooled by that surface, forming a colder, heavier layer between the surface and the rest of the air mass. Apparently (having just looked it up) you can sometimes get nighttime katabatic winds and daytime anabatic winds which is when that air mass warms up and starts moving back upslope.
Glacier National Park is not nearly as high as the Himalayas, and it still has glaciers.
USNPS took down visitor center signage winter of 2020 predicting its glaciers would be gone by 2020. Another ‘official’ false alarm.
They sure did. This is a picture of the claim of computer models predicting disappearing glaciers that was removed to save face. Because that’s all it ever was, policy made in a Washington DC bureaucratic office that was too embarrassing to leave up. Instead of disappearing glaciers, we got disappearing information.
Welcome to the Internet!
“1984”
Who needs to go “Fahrenheit 451” and burn books when a few keystrokes can delete/edit information you don’t people to know?
There’s this, someone found an old “Global Cooling” exhibit still on display at the Smithsonian a while back:
I’m surprised they didn’t just paint over the second 2 with a 3.
And then there is Mount Kilimanjaro. It towers over the African plains in Tanzania and is only 3 degrees in latitude form the equator and thus lies pretty much right in the middle of the tropical zone. At 19,341 ft it is the highest free standing mountain, or IOW stand alone as not part of a range, on earth.
In 2001 the UN IPCC declared that the glaciers of Kilimanjaro would disappear somewhere between 2015 and 2020. When the snows of Kilimanjaro did not disappear in the time that the IPCC dictated they would they changed the time of death for the glaciers to 2040. Meanwhile local researchers report that the size of the glaciers “remains steady”.
UN Grants Kilimanjaro 30 Year Reprieve | Real Climate Science
Yet the IPCC clearly claims that thr physics of CO2 based warming must warm the higher altitudes more than the lower ones.
This is why the phantom menace was renamed from global warming to climate change.
UPDATE –
The Guardian now calls it
(scary music) –
Climate Collapse
They’re probably not far off at that, just missed out the middle word ‘Con’.
The thing that is collapsing is the Guardian. I go there occaisionally to survey enemy territory for stuff to ridicule. They are now reduced to begging for contributions.
They’ve been begging for rent money for some years now, as have Wikipedia. I believe it’s another scam as they have singularly failed to go bust and I’m sure very few, if any actually contribute.
Or “global boiling”
Then wouldn’t there be marked change in precipitation at the line where the two air masses meet? If so, there’d be a change to vegitation and winter snow coverage.
The SCIENCE is robust…CC causes everything!
Hold the front page, stop the presses; ‘Climate Scientists discover cold weather’.
All anyone needs to understand is that ‘katabatic’ means = ‘falling’ and that Pyramid Station is at 5,000 metres elevation.
So what is happening is that land much furthere down the hill from Pyramid has been getting drier.
people who own and use ploughs do that and they freely admit as much – also folks who own and use chainsaws
The dry land they create means no moisture in the soils, weakened transpiration from plants, less to no water vapour in the lowland air and thus = No Rising Air columns
So, if air is rising somewhere else, (easily 100’s++ of miles away) the cold dry air created ‘at altitude’ has to find somewhere to return to ground level and places with no rising air are perfect
Enter Pyramid Station, at 5,000 metres, The Very Place where the cold dry air created by thunderstorms 100’s of miles away might ‘queue up’, awaiting its turn in the downward elevator
Once that elevator starts, inertia takes hold, or in case of moving air, the Venturi Effect.
Cols air fro all around (east, west, north, south AND upwards) gets sucked into the descending elevator.
Effectively the Stratosphere is being pulled down out of the sky and, no surprise, Pyramid Station is the first place to feel that intense cold.
But then, hence why the glaciers are disapperaing.
i.e. That flow of cold and very dry air will simply ‘evaporate the ice’
The glaciers ain’t melting, they are sublimating, into that cold dry air flow coming down from Pyramid Station
The root source of their ‘problem’ here is not their insane confabulation about ‘mixing’ – the source of their problem is folks growing annual arable crops and chopping forests probably/easily 100’s and 100’s of miles away
*cold air from all around…
PETA, in essay ‘Snows of Kilimanjaro’ in ebook Blowing Smoke I showed how the ice cap is sublimating away. It isn’t lack of snowfall from climate change. It is illegal logging of the tropical rain forest on the lower slopes, and the mountain forest on the middle slopes. The mountain air loses tree transpiration moisture. It dries. Sun causes the newly drier air to rise upslope and sublimate the mountain’s icecap. As usual, Al Gore got it wrong.
I’m shocked, shocked I tell you to hear that the
Prophetprofit Gore could have misspoken.Have you had your eyes closed, fingers in your ears and singing la, la, la, ever since ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ was trashed? Enquiring minds want to know?
I thought Katabatic winds increased in temperature as it flows down the mountainsides. The Santa Ana winds in California and the Chinook winds on the eastern slope of Colorado do that.
They probably do – PV = nRT. But I’m guessing they’re still pretty cold compared to winds heated up on the lowlands.
maybe some special places have special lapse rates?
The Chinook, Santa Ana and Foehn winds are examples of a different type of downslope wind, using adiabatic compression. Similar, but not exactly the same.
It was the 15yr ‘pause’ in the 1980s that frightened the alarmists into creating
‘climate change’.
You see, if you then have an ‘unprecedented’ Brazilian snowfall and blame it on ‘global warming’ you will be laughed at. But blame it on ‘climate change’ and everyone strokes their beards and looks wise.
“Look Ma, I got my name in print!”
(I’m 3rd back row, 4th in from the left. But they spelled it wrong. Again.)
Guglielmina Diolaiuti is that really you?
From what is presented here the authors are making assumptions about cause while ignoring other reasonable hypothesis:
“during the last three decades at Pyramid in response to global warming”
“response of Himalayan glaciers to global warming”
30 years is about half of various observed 60 to 70 year cycles, causes little understood but probably independent in operation, if not scale, during a longer natural warming cycle. Also, this study seems to be based on data from one station, a rather tiny portion of “global”.
On the other hand, lack of blaming “FF emissions” in the abstract would seem to put these authors in the 67% that do not support the climate emergency narrative.
From the CNN quote in the above article:
“an astonishing phenomenon . . . could be . . .”
(my bold emphasis added)
Such a joke. Maybe, just maybe, it’s as simple as the upper layers of the troposphere are now just getting colder with time.
“The simplest explanation is preferable to one that is more complex.”
— Occam’s razor, itself simplified
Didn’t someone, months ago, mention that the Earth’s atmosphere was shrinking, due to cooling effects? If so then could this new effect be something that doesn’t usually happen when the atmosphere is warmer or expanded?
Gee, do the Global Warm-mongers think the climate might be- just might be- a bit more complicated that they think?
This is of interest to me because there maybe a link to it and my own local climate puzzle here in England. Which is “Why in a warming world are the timing of the first snows not showing a warming trend”.
My own thinking is that this is linked to the jet stream.
In recent years l have notice that the global jet streams have become more chaotic and that this maybe causing a increasing efficiency in cooling in ways that the climate models are not picking up. The link with the Himalayas is that the peaks rise up into the jet stream and so maybe tapping into this cooling.
Not according to Australia’s premier ACCESS climate model. Maximum temperature has been steadily increasing from 1990.
Just simply a crap ACCESS graph….doubling of CO2 results in about 3 Watt/sq.M which is about one degree hotter surface temp… They know this…they can run Modtran and Hitran, why would they show their ignorance by predicting a 6C rise, higher than even the RCP8.5 fruitcakes at IPCC publish, not to mention 4 times the rise of the last 150 years ?
A grade 6 student learning to make graphs can see the credibility issues on this one.
from a climate model? must be right!
If all of these Himalayan glaciers melted, people would still have the same water supply volume, because that is dictated by rainfall and snowfall. Glaciers are merely a storage buffer in the system, not a primary source of water.
Geoff S
The un-melted snow acts as storage. If it was just rain, they would need much bigger dams.
bnice,
That is what I am saying. The disappearance of glaciers, all rhings being equal, should not affect the amount of water available for use, just the way in which it is stored.
There is no water emergency from loss of glaciers.
Green screams are wrong, in very simple ways, yet again.
Geoff S
Not the total amount of water available, no. But if you are at the foot of a mountain, needing the water, and it’s getting dumped 100km away it’s not really helping much.
Richard,
Then you have the same problem that all people have.
One solution – go live somewhere else.
Geoff S
So “the science is settled” means “we are a bunch of climate clowns, have no clue and sput anti-science to steal billions since decades”.
That and ‘shutup, shutup, shutup’ to anyone with a different idea seems about the sum of it, yes.
aka Getting Colder.
Regionally. What effect this is having beyond Nepal remains to be seen.
18 people died trying for the summit of Everest this year. In part because of terribly cold and stormy conditions during the climbing season. The monsoon was late! And of course, the claim is that “climate change” was the cause of the bad weather.
People taking so called “luxury expeditions” are putting out $100,000 to $300,000 and don’t want to be denied a shot of the summit no matter who tells them it is not advisable. BTW on three people reached the summit this year without using oxygen.
Last time there were so many casualties was in 2015 when a major earthquake caused an avalanche that took out the base camp.
Just thought I might check out how the skiing is looking going in my old stomping ground.
Webcams │ zugspitze.de
This is part of ‘cold is the new warming’ theme being touted to explain the uncooperative freezing temperatures and heavy snow after the warmest year evah!
‘climate reanalysis’
Isn’t that where they just make stuff up in place of data??