Himalayan glaciers are slowly turning into lakes. It was in the 1950s that Erwin Schneider and Fritz Muller braved the extreme hazards of a Himalayan winter to map and measure the Imja glacier, a major glacier that has been there for thousands of years.
Half a century has passed when the famous mountain geographer Alton Byers reached the very same breath taking location. But the photographs he took of the region and exhibited at Bonn, Germany tells us a different story, shocking in its implications. The famous glacier has all but disappeared and a lake stands in its stead. Small glaciers at the lower reaches have vanished altogether and only half of the larger glaciers remain.
Now most of the awesome glacier has become a lake and keep on declining at an alarming rate. Sadly the same trend is repeated all around the globe, in the Alps, Greenland and the poles.
Nepal, home for most of the Himalayas is getting increasingly warmer as a result. At certain points the banks of the lake is vulnerable. If any of these points is breached the toll of destruction it will exact will be cataclysmic.
Poor Imja Glacier! Can we turn ironic and call it the Imja Lake?
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1 comment:
I am amazed on how lakes are naturally formed in the environment. Thank you for posting about it.
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