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Natalie M. Kehrwald et al., Mass loss on Himalayan glacier endangers water resources

Mass loss on Himalayan glacier endangers water resources

Natalie M. Kehrwald (Byrd Polar Research Center, School of Earth Sciences, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA), Lonnie G. Thompson (Byrd Polar Research Center, School of Earth Sciences, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA), Yao Tandong (Institute for Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China), Ellen Mosley-Thompson (Byrd Polar Research Center, School of Earth Sciences, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA), Ulrich Schotterer (Division of Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland), Vasily Alfimov (Ion Beam Physics, Paul Scherrer Institute and ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland), Jürg Beer (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Dübendorf, Switzerland), Jost Eikenberg (Division for Radiation Protection and Waste Management, Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, Switzerland), and Mary E. Davis (Byrd Polar Research Center, School of Earth Sciences, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA)

Abstract

Ice cores drilled from glaciers around the world generally contain horizons with elevated levels of beta radioactivity including 36Cl and 3H associated with atmospheric thermonuclear bomb testing in the 1950s and 1960s. Ice cores collected in 2006 from Naimona'nyi Glacier in the Himalaya (Tibet) lack these distinctive marker horizons suggesting no net accumulation of mass (ice) since at least 1950. Naimona'nyi is the highest glacier (6050 masl) documented to be losing mass annually suggesting the possibility of similar mass loss on other high-elevation glaciers in low and mid-latitudes under a warmer Earth scenario. If climatic conditions dominating the mass balance of Naimona'nyi extend to other glaciers in the region, the implications for water resources could be serious as these glaciers feed the headwaters of the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra Rivers that sustain one of the world's most populous regions.

(Received 1 August 2008; accepted 21 October 2008; published 22 November 2008.)

Citation: Kehrwald, N. M., L. G. Thompson, Y. Tandong, E. Mosley-Thompson, U. Schotterer, V. Alfimov, J. Beer, J. Eikenberg, and M. E. Davis (2008), Mass loss on Himalayan glacier endangers water resources, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L22503, doi:10.1029/2008GL035556.

Link to abstract: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008GL035556.shtml