In just 20 years, glaciers in the Himalayas disappeared, equivalent to the weight of 570 million elephants.
Due to a lack of observations of the churning that takes place beneath the surface of the water and glaciers in the region, the loss of these glaciers between the years 2000 and 2020 was previously unnoticed.
Ankush Pandey
The mass loss of glaciers in the Himalayas that had been invisible because it occurred below the surface has now been documented for the first time by researchers. The glacial masses have lost sufficient mass to rise to around 570 million elephants set up.
Satellites are unable to observe glacier changes occurring underwater, so the lake-terminating glaciers have been underestimated. Previous studies did not take this loss into account because the satellite data used only measure the lake's surface, not the ice that has been replaced by water beneath it.
Previous studies indicated that lake-terminating glaciers in the greater Himalayas had lost 6.5 percent of their total mass, according to researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Graz University of Technology in Austria, and the UK's University of St. Andrews.
As per the review distributed in the diary Nature Geoscience, the biggest misjudgement happened in the focal Himalayas, where frosty lake development has been the most quick.
"Our evaluations diminish vulnerabilities in absolute ice sheet mass misfortune, give significant information to glacio-hydrological models, and thusly likewise support the water assets the executives in this delicate mountain area," scientists said in the paper. Galong Co in this region is a particularly intriguing case, with a high underestimation of 65 percent.
"These findings have important ramifications for comprehending the effects of regional water resources and glacial lake outburst floods," the researcher states. In a statement, lead author Guoqing Zhang from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research said, "We can more accurately assess the specific annual mass balance of these glaciers compared to land-terminating ones by accounting for the mass loss from lake-terminating glaciers. This further highlights the accelerated glacier mass loss across the greater Himalaya."
The number, area, and volume of proglacial lakes in the region increased by 47%, 33%, and 42%, respectively, between the years 2000 and 2020. An estimated 2.7 Gt of glacier mass was lost as a result of this expansion—enough to kill 570 million elephants or more than 1000 times the world's elephant population.
The underestimated mass loss of lake-terminating glaciers worldwide was emphasized by researchers, as was the necessity of comprehending the mechanisms that drive glacier mass loss.
David Rounce, a Carnegie Mellon University co-author, stated, "In the long run, we expect mass loss from lake-terminating glaciers to continue being a major contributor to total mass loss throughout the twenty-first century, as glaciers with significant mass loss may disappear more rapidly compared to existing projections."
