DEHRADUN: Union environment minister Bhupender Yadav flagged the growing ecological vulnerability of the Himalayas, which is marked by accelerated glacier melt, while addressing ‘Sagarmatha Sambaad’ — a global dialogue on climate change and its impact on mountainous regions — in Kathmandu on Friday.“The science is clear. The Himalayas are sounding the alarm,” Yadav said, warning that climate change is hastening glacier retreat and endangering water security for downstream populations.‘Need regional synergy to protect fragile ecosystems’Union environment minister Bhupender Yadav added that the Himalayan communities are under threat despite contributing little to the climate crisis, and called for regional cooperation to share knowledge and protect these fragile ecosystems.The Union minister’s call for action comes on the heels of a study published in ‘Journal of Glaciology’ by Cambridge University Press which revealed a troubling trend at Himachal Pradesh’s Gepang Gath glacier: rapid glacial retreat coupled with the dramatic expansion of its proglacial lake — a water body that forms at the front or side of a glacier and is typically dammed by moraine, glacial ice, or debris. Over the past six decades, this lake has grown nearly sixfold, from 0.2 sq km in 1962 to 1.2 sq km in 2023.Led by scientists from National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research under ministry of earth sciences, the study links this expansion directly to the glacier’s retreat, further accelerated by calving (the breaking off of ice chunks from the glacier’s terminus). Between 2014 and 2023, Gepang Gath retreated 480m, resulting in substantial surface area loss and volume loss (21.7 million cubic metres of ice). The glacier’s mass balance has shown a consistently negative trend, indicating it is losing more mass than it gains.The study highlights a dangerous feedback loop: as the lake grows, its relatively warm water accelerates melting at the glacier’s edge, triggering further calving.To prevent disasters, the study calls for urgent measures, including the establishment of early warning systems for the proglacial lake and enhanced monitoring of glacier-lake dynamics.(With agency inputs)
