New Delhi: The Hindu Kush Himalayan region, which encompasses the highest mountain ranges in the world and contains the largest volume of ice on Earth outside the polar regions, is projected to lose up to 80 per cent of its glaciers by 2100 if emissions are not reduced drastically and urgently, according to a new study.
The study, conducted by researchers of the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, said the glaciers lost ice 65 per cent faster in the 2010-2019 period as compared to 2000-2009.
The glaciers and snow-covered mountains of the Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region are an important source of water for 12 rivers that provide fresh water to 240 million people living in the region and another 1.65 billion downstream.
The researchers warned the rapid melting of glaciers due to human-caused climate change will cause intense flash floods and avalanches and impact the lives and livelihood of around two billion people.
The impact will include the destruction of traditional irrigation channels, crop losses and failures, rangeland degradation, land use changes, and an overall decline in crop and livestock production.
“Projections for the future remain the same bleak, with the HKH glaciers losing 30 per cent-50 per cent of their volume by 2100 if global warming remains below 2 degrees Celsius. For higher global warming levels, the loss of glacier volume will range from 55 per cent-80 per cent,” said the inter-governmental organisation, which includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar and Pakistan as its members.
It is expected to create new hotspots of potentially dangerous glacial lakes, with implications for glacial lake outburst flood hazards and risk, it said.
The HKH region, covering more than 4.2 million square kilometres, encompasses the world’s highest mountain ranges such as Mt Everest and K2 and contains the largest volume of ice on Earth outside of the polar regions.
Spanning some 3,500 kilometres in length from Afghanistan in the west to Myanmar in the east, and covering parts or all of Pakistan, India, China, Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh, the region hosts all or parts of four global biodiversity hotspots supporting diverse flora and fauna — the Himalayas, the Indo-Burma, the Mountains of Central Asia and the Mountains of Southwest China.
At the Paris climate talks in 2015, countries agreed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius as compared to the pre-industrial level to avoid extreme, destructive and likely irreversible effects of climate change.
The Earth’s global surface temperature has risen by around 1.15 degrees Celsius and the carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution is closely tied to it. In the business-as-usual scenario, the world is heading for a temperature rise of around 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.
Climate science says the world must halve emissions by 2030 from the 2009 levels to retain any chances of keeping global temperature rise below the 1.5-degree Celcius mark.
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