Glaciers and snow-covered mountains in the Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region serve as a key source of water for 12 rivers that provide freshwater to 240 million people in the region and an additional 1.65 billion people downstream
According to a new study, if emissions are not drastically and immediately reduced, the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, which contains the highest mountain ranges in the world and the most ice outside of the polar regions, could lose up to 80% of its glaciers by 2100.
Researchers from the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu conducted the study, which found that the glaciers lost ice 65% more quickly between 2010 and 2019 than they did between 2000 and 2009.
The Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region's glaciers and snow-capped mountains are a significant source of water for 12 rivers that supply freshwater to 240 million residents of the region and an additional 1.65 billion people downstream.
According to the experts, the rapid glacier melting brought on by human-caused climate change will have an influence on two billion people's lives and way of life by causing powerful flash floods and avalanches.
Traditional irrigation canals will be destroyed, crops will fail, rangelands will deteriorate, land use patterns will shift, and total agricultural and livestock production will fall.
“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 anticipated to produce new hotspots of potentially hazardous glacial lakes, with implications for the risk and hazards associated with glacial lake outburst floods.
The HKH region, with a land area of more than 4.2 million square kilometres, is home to the highest mountain ranges on Earth, including Mt. Everest and K2, as well as the most ice outside of the polar regions.
The region, which stretches 3,500 kilometres from Afghanistan in the west to Myanmar in the east and includes all or parts of Pakistan, India, China, Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh, is home to the Himalayas, Indo-Burma, Mountains of Central Asia, and Mountains of Southwest China, four global biodiversity hotspots that support a variety of flora and fauna.
In order to prevent drastic, damaging, and possibly permanent effects of climate change, countries agreed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius relative to the pre-industrial level at the 2015 Paris climate negotiations.
Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide has been released into the atmosphere, which has caused the Earth's surface temperature to rise by about 1.15 degrees Celsius. By the end of the century, if things continue as they are, global temperatures will have risen by about 3 degrees Celsius.
According to climate scientists, the world's emissions must be cut in half from 2009 levels by 2030 if it hopes to keep the increase in global temperature below the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold.