COPENHAGEN—The Altiplano, or high plain, of Bolivia and Peru is getting a new climate. In the past 60 years temperatures have risen, rainfall patterns have changed and soils have begun to dry out even further. As a result, farmers move their crops further up the mountainsides, like endangered species seeking refuge at cooler elevations. Floods […]
Organic carbon (OC) concentrations in the Zuoqiupu ice core for the monsoon (June–September) and nonmonsoon (October–May) seasons, and for the annual mean. Fig. 3 shows the Zuoqiupu data broken down by monsoonal and nonmonsoonal periods. The monsoonal period has lower BC and OC concentrations because of the high precipitation rate, but the source is unambiguously […]
On the Tibetan Plateau, temperatures are rising and glaciers are melting faster than climate scientists would expect based on global warming alone. A recent study of ice cores from five Tibetan glaciers by NASA and Chinese scientists confirmed the likely culprit: rapid increases in black soot concentrations since the 1990s, mostly from air pollution sources […]
(NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) Black soot deposited on Tibetan glaciers has contributed significantly to the retreat of the world’s largest non-polar ice masses, according to new research by scientists from NASA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Soot absorbs incoming solar radiation and can speed glacial melting when deposited on snow in sufficient quantities. Temperatures […]
By Staff WritersKathmandu (AFP) Dec 6, 2009 More than a billion people in Asia depend on Himalayan glaciers for water, but experts say they are melting at an alarming rate, threatening to bring drought to large swathes of the continent. Glaciers in the Himalayas, a 2,400-kilometre (1,500-mile) range that sweeps through Pakistan, India, China, […]
IANS 1 December 2009, 10:20am IST NEW DELHI: In the Sundarbans, surface water temperature has been rising at the rate of 0.5 degree Celsius per decade over the past three decades, eight times the rate of global warming, says a new study. That makes the Sundarbans one of the worst climate change hotspots on the […]
By Ben Arnoldy | The Christian Science Monitor, Oct 22, 2009 Stakmo, India — Chhewang Norphel makes artificial glaciers. The reason: The real ones have rapidly receded up the Himalayan slopes in his home district of Ladakh in northernmost India. Himalayan communities like Ladakh rely on glacial runoff to grow food, making them – along […]
Deep in the Himalayas, the disappearance of glaciers is threatening the kingdom of Bhutan. Anjali Nayar trekked through the mountains to see how the country is adapting to a warming world. By Anjali Nayar …Glaciers in the Himalayas are retreating faster than in any other part of the world and they could disappear completely by […]
SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) – Indian Kashmir’s biggest glacier, which feeds the region’s main river, is melting faster than other Himalayas glaciers, threatening the water supply of tens of thousands of people, a new report warned on Monday. SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) – Indian Kashmir’s biggest glacier, which feeds the region’s main river, is melting faster than […]
Fumes from wood fires and from diesel engines accelerate melting, Indian scientists warn By Randeep Ramesh and Suzanne Goldenberg, The Observer, Sunday 4 October 2009 Glaciers in the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau that feed the river systems of almost half the world’s people are melting faster because of the effects of clouds of soot […]