The Melting Glaciers Part Two(Shirley Smothers) Climate change in the Himalayas are real. Melting glaciers, erratic and unpredictable weather conditions, are impacting on the people and wildlife of the region.

The Himalayas is one of the world's most sensitive hot spots for climate change with impacts manifesting at a particularly rapid rate. A situation that is predicted to worsen in coming years, far-reaching impacts of food and water, as well as biodiversity and species loss. Not just in the Himalayas, but throughout Asia.

The Himalayan glaciers are the water towers of Asia, and the source of many of the world's great rivers: The Yangtze, the Ganges, and the Indus. Over a billion people depend directly on the Himalayas for their survival, with over 500 million people in South Asia.

Climate change in the Himalayas poses a serious threat to the source of these great rivers with dire and far-reaching impacts on biodiversity, food, and energy security. The Asia Nations must therefore move rapidly to build resilience to these impacts.

A significant threat posed by climate change in the Himalayas is the continual formation of a large number of glacial lakes. The enhanced rate at which the snow and ice is melting means that the water accumulating in these lakes is increasing rapidly. And if the natural rubble dams holding back the waters break, a tsunami of water, mud, ice, and stone is swept down the valleys. Such events can have devastating consequences to local communities; washing away roads, bridges, houses, people, livestock and crops.

One example is Lake Imja, a high altitude glacial lake near Mount Everest in the Himalayas, Nepal.The continued glacial melt, bad weather, a landslide, or a seismic event (common in the area) trigger the bursting of its swollen waters. This would release a violent 'Glacial Lake Outburst Flood'. With a recent history in the area of other catastrophic Glacial Lake Outburst Floods the local people know all too well the constant threat that hangs over them.

Spring came early in 2022 in the high mountains of Gilgit-Baltistan, a remote border region of Pakistan. Record temperatures in March and April hastened melting of the Shisper Glacier, creating a lake that swelled and, on May 7, burst through an ice dam. A torrent of water and debris flooded the valley below, damaging fields and houses, wrecking two power plants, and washing away parts of the main highway and a bridge connecting Pakistan and China.
Pakistan’s climate change minister, shared videos of the destruction and highlighted the vulnerability of a region with the largest number of glaciers outside the Earth’s poles. Why were these glaciers losing mass so quickly? “High global temperatures,”
Just over a decade ago, relatively little was known about glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalayas, the vast ice mountains that run across Central and South Asia, from Afghanistan in the west to Myanmar in the east. But a step-up in research in the past 10 years –  spurred in part by an embarrassing error in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Scientists now have data on almost every glacier in high mountain Asia. They know “how these glaciers have changed not only in area but in mass during the last 20 years. “We also know much more about the processes which govern glacial melt. This information will give policymakers some instruments to really plan for the future.”
That future is daunting. New research suggests that the area of Himalayan glaciers has shrunk by 40 percent between 400 and 700 years ago, and that in the past few decades ice melt has accelerated faster than in other mountainous parts of the world. Retreat seems to have also occurred in Pakistan’s Karakoram range, one of the few areas where glaciers had been stable. Depending on the level of global warming, studies project that as much as two-thirds, of the region’s glaciers could vanish by the end of the century. Correspondingly, meltwater is expected to increase until around the 2050s and then begin to decline.

The glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalayas are melting faster than expected. In the 2010s, the glaciers melted 65% faster than in the previous decade. If greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rate, the glaciers could lose up to 80% of their ice by 2100. This could have negative consequences for the surrounding areas, including:
Infrastructure extreme weather: Such as flooding, landslides, and avalanches agriculture hydroelectric power environmental regulations.
Water shortages: For the nearly 2 billion people who live downstream of the rivers that originate in the region.

A theory I have is that bacteria’s that have are frozen in the glaciers will re-emerge once the glaciers melt. We may have no immunity to these bacteria, this may be the final toll us Humans and Animals.

Even if we significantly curb emissions in the coming decades, more than a third of of the world’s remaining glaciers will melt before the year 2100.

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