The Himalayas are approaching a dangerous threshold as glaciers melt faster, glacial lakes grow more unstable and the mountains face a widening gap in monitoring, according to new research.
The findings come in the aftermath of devastating floods in Nepal and Tibet, which killed more than 1,300 people and caused widespread destruction, highlighting the growing risks from a rapidly changing Himalayan environment.
Himalayan glaciers are now losing mass 65% faster than they were a decade ago, the report by global consultancy Systemiq, produced with the Integrated Mountain Initiative and with technical contributions from the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and GB Pant National Institute of Himalayan Environment, says.
Yet only about 21 of the estimated 40,000 glaciers across the Himalaya-Karakoram region are being monitored in detail and on a sustained basis, according to the report.
That monitoring gap matters because the physical landscape is changing rapidly.
As glaciers retreat, they can leave behind expanding lakes held back by unstable deposits of rock and ice. At the same time, warming is destabilising permafrost – permanently frozen ground that can thaw as temperatures rise – and high mountain slopes, increasing the possibility of cascading hazards, the report says.
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