GLOBAL CLIMATE ALSO CHANGE HIMALAYAS

Himalayas also goes to melt due to Global Climate change.
The Imja Glacier below Lhotse is the fastest receding glacier in Nepal, and is melting at 70 m a year as seen in these pictures taken in 1956, 2006 and 2007 (above).

The melting has created huge lakes on Imja Glacier which are expanding alarmingly, and scientists are concerned there will be catastrophic glacial lake outburst floods in future that could kill thousands of people downstream.


The Kathmandu-based mountain research institute, ICIMOD, estimates that the Khumbu Glacier is also retreating at an average of 20m per year. The length of the glacier has shrunk from 12,040m in the 1960s to 11,200m in 2001 and Everest Base Camp has actually dropped from 5,320m to 5,280m since Hillary and Tenzing first set up camp there. All these glaciers are seen in this NASA photograph of Chomolungma taken in 2000 from the Space Shuttle (right).

Global average temperatures are rising at 0.06 degree a year, and scientists say snowlines especially of mountain regions close to the equator are most affected. But scientists at ICIMOD which monitors the Hindu Kush-Himalaya region says there isn't enough proof that receding snowlines are directly the result of climate change.

"It is still too early to say," says ICIMOD glaciologist Pradeep Mool, "but if present trends continue most valley glaciers will have disappeared by 2050."(source from Nepalitimes by Billi Bierling)