Scientist’s quest to study Himalayan climate threat

Graduate student Bisma Qazi, left, treks along a crevasse while climbing the Chhota Shigri glacier in Himachal Pradesh on Octpber 4, 2014. Courtesy JNU/IHCAP

NEW DELHI // They hold the third-largest volume of ice on the planet, the world’s tallest mountains, and rivers sustaining millions of people.

Yet the Himalayan watersheds are one of the least studied glaciers on earth, which means no one can accurately predict how a warming planet would change river flows, trigger floods or affect farming.

Alagappan Ramanathan is on a mission to change that.

The 52-year-old professor of environmental science plans to train a team of young scientists who will gather data on the Himalayan glaciers for decades to come.

Professor Ramanathan, who works at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, has his work cut out.

He needs to convince graduate students in their early 20s to swap the promise of well-paying programming jobs for a future of dodging crevasses and braving altitude sickness in temperatures as low as minus 15ºC.

Another obstacle is the long-term nature of glacier monitoring: scientists need at least 20 or 30 years of data to determine the extent of glacier retreat.

But Prof Ramanathan’s mission is urgent.

Since the 1970s glaciers in the Himalayas have probably lost 13 per cent of their surface area.

Faster melting can raise the risk of devastating floods and make river flows unpredictable, increasing tensions over water in the world’s most militarised mountain zone.

But there are currently so few glaciologists in India that only about a dozen of the nearly 9,700 glaciers in the country’s Himalayas are being monitored.

“[T]here is a huge lack of data.” said Markus Stoffel, a glacier expert at the University of Geneva, who’s worked in south Asia since 2003. “In fact we don’t even have detailed information on how much ice there is in the mountains.”

In September Prof Ramanathan sent a dozen students, half of whom had never seen snow in their lives, on an all-expenses-paid trip to Chhota Shigri, a glacier in northern India, 113 kilometres west of the Tibetan border.

The students spent two weeks trekking up paths carpeted with boulders and across snowy ridges, learning how to measure the rate of ice melt, and getting accustomed to the piercing altitude headaches that are inevitable at 4,877 metres above sea level.

“There is less oxygen, you face lung problems and psychological problems,” Prof Ramanathan said. “For 15 days you see no other people ... only rocks and ice.”

Finding students interested in glaciology in a tropical nation like India is a challenge because most universities and colleges are located inland where people are not exposed to extreme conditions.

Himalayan snowfields are also found at higher altitudes than other alpine glaciers in the world, making them more challenging to ascend.

One student in Prof Ramanathan’s expedition group had to be evacuated after her vision failed due to altitude-related problems.

For another participant, 26-year old Lydia Sam, frigid weather presented the greatest challenge. Ms Sam’s trip was marred by a litany of ailments: repeated fevers, nausea, stomachache, headaches and a twisted ankle.

The expedition was part of a programme funded by the Indian and Swiss governments, and served as a crash course in all the skills a glaciologist needs to know. Students sketched rocks, measured stream flows, and mapped the watershed during the day, as professors conducted impromptu quizzes on geology and climate science.

The retreat of Himalayan glaciers is particularly concerning as they feed into south Asia’s biggest rivers: the Ganges, Indus and Brahmaputra.

More than 800 million people live in the basins of the three rivers, making the study of the glaciers a major global priority, said Graham Cogley, an emeritus professor of geography at Trent University in the Canadian province of Ontario.

“Policymakers and politicians haven’t grasped the scale of the problem yet,” Professor Cogley said. “Understanding these glaciers is vitally important.”

Impacts are already visible: lakes that hold glacial water have overflowed in recent years, catastrophically flooding villages and towns.

India’s glacier research programme received an unintended boost seven years ago, however, when the United Nations climate body made a glaring miscalculation.

In its 2007 report, the intergovernmental panel on climate change said there was a “very high” likelihood of Himalayan glaciers vanishing by 2035 if the Earth keeps warming at current rates. The statement was widely reported by global news organisations even as a chorus of leading scientists challenged the claim.

The media attention prompted an increase in government funding for glacier research. Last year India’s department of science and technology spent about 150 million rupees (Dh8.9m) on research to monitor nine glaciers.

But Anirudha Mahagaonkar, who was part of the Chhota Shigri expedition, says the government needs to do more to raise the profile of researchers.

“What we are studying is really important,” the 23-year-old said. “But most people in India just don’t realise how serious things could get if we don’t study glaciers.”

* Bloomberg