NEW DELHI: Fresh reports of drastic climate change for the Himalayan region have surfaced ringing alarm bells for the down hill North East and Bangladesh delta. Hundreds of glaciers in the Himalayas would melt and then shrink casing massive floods, and subsequently, acute water shortage, the studies have shown.
The worst affected would be the regions on the foot hills of the great mountain range including the North East India.
Nearly two billion people in Asia, from coastal city dwellers to yak-herding nomads, will begin to experience water shortages in coming decades as global warming shrinks glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau, the reports said.
The plateau has more than 45,000 glaciers that build up during the snowy season and then drain to the major rivers in Asia, including the Brahmaputra, Yangtze, Yellow, and Mekong.
The UN Climate Panel said last year that Himalayan glaciers, which feed rivers, on which hundreds of millions of people depend, could shrink to 100,000 square kms by 2030 from 500,000 now because of global warming.
Scientists and environmentalists have already warned that global warming is going to affect lower parts of the Himalayas under which several areas of the region come. They have predicted erratic rainfall and abnormal changes in the weather in the region once famous for a salubrious good climate.
Temperatures in the plateau, which some scientists call the "Third Pole" for its massive glacial ice sheets, are rising twice as fast as other parts of the world, said Lonnie Thompson, a glaciologist at Ohio State University, who has collected ice cores from glaciers around the world for decades.
As glaciers melt at faster rates from the higher temperatures, a false sense of security about water supplies has developed across Asia, he said.
If melting continues at current levels, two-thirds of the plateau's glaciers will likely be gone by 2050, he said at a meeting on climate change at the Asia Society in Manhattan.
Well before then, a threshold will have been hit in which people who depend on the water will start to start to see supplies dwindle.
Nearly two billion people in China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Bhutan would be hit by water shortages as the rivers slow, Geoff Dabelko, Director of the Environment and Security Programme at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, said.
Nomads in the Himalayas are at risk as deserts have already encroached on grasslands for yaks, on which they depend for most of their food, said Michael Zhao, a filmmaker who has worked in the region.
At worst, the shortages could lead to new wars in the region over scarce resources, Robert Barnett, a professor of Tibetan studies at Columbia University, said at the meeting.
Dams to contain the melted water can help in certain cases, but are generally a poor solution because they often face opposition from local residents and people in countries and regions downstream from the structures.
Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh during his Beijing visit had already raised the issue of diverting waters from international river flowing out of Tibet.
Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao had said that water scarcity threatened the very "survival of the Chinese nation".
The World Health Organisation also has predicted epidemics because of the climate change due to rising sea level. It would create several other problems for the poor countries. The entire reigon is also witnessing drastic change in weather.
Source: http://www.theshillongtimes.com/
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The worst affected would be the regions on the foot hills of the great mountain range including the North East India.
Nearly two billion people in Asia, from coastal city dwellers to yak-herding nomads, will begin to experience water shortages in coming decades as global warming shrinks glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau, the reports said.
The plateau has more than 45,000 glaciers that build up during the snowy season and then drain to the major rivers in Asia, including the Brahmaputra, Yangtze, Yellow, and Mekong.
The UN Climate Panel said last year that Himalayan glaciers, which feed rivers, on which hundreds of millions of people depend, could shrink to 100,000 square kms by 2030 from 500,000 now because of global warming.
Scientists and environmentalists have already warned that global warming is going to affect lower parts of the Himalayas under which several areas of the region come. They have predicted erratic rainfall and abnormal changes in the weather in the region once famous for a salubrious good climate.
Temperatures in the plateau, which some scientists call the "Third Pole" for its massive glacial ice sheets, are rising twice as fast as other parts of the world, said Lonnie Thompson, a glaciologist at Ohio State University, who has collected ice cores from glaciers around the world for decades.
As glaciers melt at faster rates from the higher temperatures, a false sense of security about water supplies has developed across Asia, he said.
If melting continues at current levels, two-thirds of the plateau's glaciers will likely be gone by 2050, he said at a meeting on climate change at the Asia Society in Manhattan.
Well before then, a threshold will have been hit in which people who depend on the water will start to start to see supplies dwindle.
Nearly two billion people in China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Bhutan would be hit by water shortages as the rivers slow, Geoff Dabelko, Director of the Environment and Security Programme at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, said.
Nomads in the Himalayas are at risk as deserts have already encroached on grasslands for yaks, on which they depend for most of their food, said Michael Zhao, a filmmaker who has worked in the region.
At worst, the shortages could lead to new wars in the region over scarce resources, Robert Barnett, a professor of Tibetan studies at Columbia University, said at the meeting.
Dams to contain the melted water can help in certain cases, but are generally a poor solution because they often face opposition from local residents and people in countries and regions downstream from the structures.
Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh during his Beijing visit had already raised the issue of diverting waters from international river flowing out of Tibet.
Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao had said that water scarcity threatened the very "survival of the Chinese nation".
The World Health Organisation also has predicted epidemics because of the climate change due to rising sea level. It would create several other problems for the poor countries. The entire reigon is also witnessing drastic change in weather.
Source: http://www.theshillongtimes.com/
.::. All my articles can be view here: MELTED HEARTS .::.
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