The great glacier debate

By: Rina Saeed Khan on October 6th, 2009

The Baltoro glacier is larger now than it was in 1947

They are called the “water towers of Asia” – some are so vast, they can be seen from outer space. Close up, they are an awesome sight – expansive rivers of ice set against towering peaks. These are the glaciers of the Tibetan Plateau and the Hindu Kush, Himalayan and Karakoram Mountains. Scientists in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) now believe that in the coming decades many glaciers in this region will retreat, while smaller glaciers may disappear altogether due to rising temperatures.

This should be worrying for us living in Pakistan, since experts say that between 70-80% of the water in the Indus River, Pakistan’s lifeline, comes from mountain discharge which includes glacial melt. However, there have been several articles in the Pakistani press recently quoting scientists as saying that the glaciers in the Karakorams are actually growing because of the strengthening of the Westerlies (winds that bring winter snows). The conclusion being drawn is that we need not worry about climate change affecting our water supply adversely! In fact, I have heard some people argue that we might even “benefit” from climate change.

“It is an interesting phenomenon in Pakistan. Some glaciers in the Karakorams are growing – that might well be because of the Westerlies getting stronger”, explained Andreas Schild, the Director General of the well-known International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), whom I met in Kathmandu recently at a regional climate change conference. The conference, titled “Kathmandu to Copenhagen 2009″ attempted to bring together regional countries to come up with a “vision for addressing climate change risks and vulnerabilities in the Himalayas”. According to Schild, when we say “Himalayas” here, we are including the Hindu Kush and Karakorams. He added: “But are these surging glaciers growing in mass? We don’t know… we don’t have enough data on the mass of ice that we have up in the mountains”.

Mass balance studies are important because they give an accurate picture of the glacier’s size (and health) by sticking poles inside and taking field measurements. Apparently the length and breadth of a glacier is not indicative of its size – it’s the mass inside that counts. “How mass is affected is a climate change indicator”, explained India’s foremost glaciologist, Syed Iqbal Hasnain at a media workshop held in Kathmandu just before the conference. The workshop was organized by the Earth Journalism Network and China Dialogue, and the focus was on the “Third Pole”, which is what many scientists and policymakers are now calling this mountainous region, home to the largest ice mass on the planet after the Arctic and Antarctica.

Hasnain believes that the glaciers in this region are melting twice as fast as expected, forming glacial lakes which can be dangerous if they burst out of the fragile moraine dams which hold them in place. The devastating flood that ensues is called a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood or GLOF. There were several incidents in the Hunza valley last year, where houses and roads were swept away by GLOFs. Hasnain listed 52 dangerous glacial lakes in Pakistan alone and said that soon the soldiers up in Siachin would be fighting on the ground since the glacier is melting so fast! “Siachin is in bad shape. They are dumping garbage into the cracks, accelerating the melting”.

Just when I was convinced that we need to be alarmed at the increased rate of glacier melt in our high mountains, I attended a presentation at the Kathmandu conference given by an American scientist, Professor Richard Armstrong from the University of Colorado, who has done satehllite-based research on glaciers in the Eastern Himalayas. He was commissioned by the World Bank to do the study. His conclusion was that there was no major melting going on in the glaciers located above 5,400 m! Since most of our big glaciers, like Baltoro, are located above this altitude, does this mean that we are safe?

“There is an increase in melt in lower-elevation glaciers and the hazards of moraine-dammed lakes are real, but I believe that the rate of retreat of the glaciers has been exaggerated”, he told us later at a press conference. When I asked him about the Indus Basin, he replied that he would like to do a conclusive study on the Basin soon, but he believed that the glaciers there are quite healthy and that the increasing seasonal snow would have a greater effect on stream flow volume!

Of course Professor Armstrong has not exactly gone up to the glaciers in these mountains to do the study – the research was done mostly by satellite imagery provided by NASA and other information. “There can be a large margin of error when doing remote sensing”, explained the Director General of ICIMOD when I turned to him for further clarification. “The problem is that there is a lack of information, and the higher up we go, the less we have. No research is done regularly on this region”.

He added that what was most essential for our food security was data on the percentage of ice-melt contributing to river flows: “We need to know how much water there will be in our rivers”. This research has been done in the Andes Mountains in South America, where scientists have monitored glacial retreat and its effects on the hydrology of rivers. ICIMOD is trying to build the capacity of regional scientists to do these studies. Countries and governmental organizations like WAPDA (Pakistan’s Water Resources and Power Development Authority) need to share all the information they have so that the blank spots can be filled in.

However, there was one important scientist missing in Kathmandu who has worked extensively on glaciers in Pakistan for decades. I finally got a chance to talk to the geo-scientist Ken Hewitt a few days before he left for Skardu in September. “Nowhere in the upper Indus Basin do you have the collapse of glaciers like in Nepal and the Alps”, he told me. “They are actually holding their own or growing. They could well be growing because of climate change. The summer weather is cloudier and there is more snowfall. The Baltoro glacier is larger now than it was in 1947”. Hewitt pointed out that there was a serious need to look closely at what is happening and that more glaciers needed to be tracked. WAPDA, he says, is starting to operate field stations again to monitor the glaciers.

Growing glaciers, however, are not exactly good news. Hewitt says: “Surging glaciers are dangerous because they store water. The Hunza River has declined by 20% due to the advance of glaciers in the area. These glaciers are storing ice… This is a different problem and needs to be investigated”.

The truth, they say, usually lies somewhere in the middle – and what emerges from talking to all these scientists is that the glaciers in the region are changing due to climate change, but at what rate and in what way we just don’t know for sure. We need not wait for scientific data to act, however. ICIMOD is keen on promoting adaptation to make mountain communities more resilient to climate change. They would also like to see the Himalayan countries get together on one platform to give a clear message to the rest of the world during the UN’s Climate Change Summit, due to be held in Copenhagen this December. For that, hydrologists, glaciologists, geo-scientists and the local mountain people of this region need to come together and present as accurate a picture as possible.