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It’s the ultimate challenge for climbers around the world, but the option to climb Mount Everest could be at risk – thanks to Climate Change.
New research has shown that Mount Everest’s highest glacier, South Col Glacier (the South Col Glacier), is losing decades of ice every year amid rising temperatures.
Worryingly, this could result in more avalanches, decreased water supply, upon whom more than one million people depend for drinking and irrigation.
According to researchers from the University of California, Mount Everest could be more difficult to scale due to increased melting. Maine.
Mariusz Potocki, a glaciochemist, said that the climate predictions for Himalaya suggest continued warming. He also predicted that glacier mass losses would continue. Even the top end of Everest could be impacted by anthropogenic sources warming.
New research has shown that Mount Everest’s highest glacier South Col Glacier is losing decades worth of ice each year due to rising temperatures.
The findings come from the 2019 National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition – the most comprehensive single scientific expedition to Mount Everest in history.
The team also installed two weather stations and collected an ice core at the summit of Mount Everest as part of the study.
The highest weather stations in all of the world are located at 27,657ft (8.420m) and 26,066ft (7.945m).
The ice core was then taken at 26,312ft (8.020m), making it one of the highest known specimens of its kind.
Analysing the ice core revealed that the ice thinning rate was approximately 6.5ft (2 meters) per year.
According to researchers, this is due to the fact that the glacier changed from snowpack into ice. This means that it has lost its ability of reflecting solar radiation and has been melting more quickly.
Worryingly, these findings also suggest that the glacier has thinned by around 180ft (55 meters) in the last quarter-century, thinning more than 80 times faster then the nearly 2,000 years it took for it to form.
South Col Glacier is very exposed. This means that although warming air temperatures are the main cause of melting, strong winds are also a factor.
The findings come from the 2019 National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition – the most comprehensive single scientific expedition to Mount Everest in history
Overall, the findings point out the critical balance that snow-covered surfaces offer Mount Everest.
The researchers wrote in their paper: “Everest’s highest Glacier has served as a sendinel for this delicate equilibrium and has demonstrated that even Earth’s roof is impacted by anthropogenic Source Warming.”
The team hopes that the findings will be used to highlight the widespread effects of rising temperatures all over the globe.
Paul Mayewski, co-author of the study, added: ‘It answers one of the big questions posed by our 2019 NGS/Rolex Mount Everest Expedition — whether the highest glaciers on the planet are impacted by human-source climate change.
The team installed two weather stations and gathered an ice core from Mount Everest. The red arrow indicates the location of the ice core, while the yellow one shows the location for the Balcony weather station.
“The answer is a clear yes, and it has been a significant improvement since the late 90s.
The University of Leeds researchers warned that the study was imminent. Himalayan glaciers melting at an “exceptional rate” and could threaten the supply of water for hundreds of millions of people in Asia.
Researchers found that Himalayan glaciers have lost ice 10 times more quickly over the last few decades – predominantly since the year 2000 – than on average since the Little Ice Age hundreds of years ago.
The Little Ice Age was an era of major mountain-glacier growth that spanned the period from the early 14th Century through the mid-century. It saw rivers freeze over and crops die.
The study also revealed that Himalayan glaciers are now shrinking faster than other glaciers around the world, which is increasing sea levels.
This accelerating melting has implications for hundreds of millions of residents who depend on Asia’s major rivers for food and energy – including the Brahmaputra, Ganges and Indus.
