Ama Dablam rises 6,812 meters to the southeast of Mount Everest. Its name, literally, means “the mother’s pendant,” describing a glacier that for thousands of years has hung from the rugged peak like a pearl from an ancient mother’s neck.
Revered as one of the most beautiful and sacred mountains in the Himalayas, Ama Dablam was until recently off limits to climbing expeditions. In 2006, however, the majority of the glacier broke off, crashing to the valley below and killing six climbers who were camping at the mountain’s base.
Ang Tshering Sherpa, president of the Union of Asian Alpine Associations, believes that aside from being a tragic and isolated incident, the event symbolizes more disturbing changes that are hitting the region. And he is not alone.
Mr. Sherpa comes from a long line of mountain people; his great-grandfather was one of the leading Himalayan guides for the first Mount Everest expedition in 1922. Earlier this month, Sherpa described the changes occurring in his homeland when we met at the Kathmandu-to-Copenhagen conference in Nepal, the first formal meeting of Himalayan nations on climate change.
As I noted in a recent article for Worldwatch’s Eye on Earth news service, Sherpa explained that in 1960, Nepal was home to 3,000 glaciers and no high-altitude lakes, some of which threaten to burst and flood downstream areas. Now, he says, “every glacier is melting and we have between 2,000 and 3,000 lakes.”
The Greater Himalayan region sweeps across the Asian continent from Afghanistan in the west to China and Bhutan in the east, passing through Pakistan, India, Nepal, and Tibet. This great mountain range is the most extensive high-altitude area on Earth, earning it the title “the roof of the world.” Its ice and snow cover spans more than 112,000 square kilometers, and together with rain deposited by regional weather patterns, this immense hydrological system provides water to nearly 40 percent of the global population.
The Himalayan system is more than just high peaks. It contains a rich variety of ecological types, from alpine tundra to lowland forests. Living throughout the surrounding river basins, 1.3 billion people rely on much of the water that flows downstream from this extensive mountain range.
Across the region, there have been reports of rapid glacial retreat at low- to mid- altitudes, extreme variability in rainfall with shifts in monsoon patterns, rapidly rising temperatures, and the formation of treacherous glacial lakes, driven by climate change, at increasingly high altitudes. Dr. Richard Armstrong, associate professor of geography at the University of Colorado, says that although glacial retreat and expansion is a natural phenomenon, “It is the rate of change, not the change itself, that is alarming.”
As these climatic variations intensify, they bring the danger of extreme weather events, crop failures, changes in water availability, new and more-prevalent diseases, transboundary resource conflicts, and the loss of livelihoods and lives. The mid-latitudes where the mountains are located play a key role in generating both regional and global climate, and changes in this region, often termed the “third pole,” may well have impacts on our global climatic systems as well.
Yet scientists say there are significant gaps in knowledge and that a great deal more research is needed to fully understand and react to what is happening, thereby minimizing the vulnerability of local populations.
This was the subject of discussion at this month’s conference in Nepal, which brought together leaders and experts from across South Asian to highlight the latest impacts and opportunities, to develop a means of collaboration for moving forward, and to reach consensus on a common message to the global community.
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