UKC

A new report by The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) assessing the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region has revealed that at least one-third (a predicted 36%) of the region's glaciers will disappear by 2100, regardless of any positive actions to minimise climate change...

Read more

In reply to UKC/UKH News:

It seems that the authors of this research use "HIndu Kush Himalaya" as a term to describe the whole mountainous area which includes the Hindu Kush, Pamir, Karakorum, and all the Himalaya. The maps and the populations affected do suggest this. "Greater Himalaya" is perhaps a more usual term for this combined area. The title of the UKC article is, I think, misleading. I was interested as a visitor, long ago, to the Afghan Hindu Kush, but it's much broader than that, and very worrying.

Thanks to UKC for publishing.

Martin

In reply to Martin Hore:

Yes, I was confused too! Lots of references to areas outside the HK as we know it. Good suggestion, I'll make the title broader since it is more appropriate.  

In reply to Martin Hore:

It's a confusingly all-encompassing term, it seems:

http://www.icimod.org/?q=1137

'[HKH region and adjacent mountain areas include: Afghanistan – all provinces except Kandahar, Helmand, Nimroz, Farah, and Herat; Bangladesh – Chittagong Hill Tracts; Bhutan – whole country; China – parts of Yunnan (Diqing, Nujiang, Dali prefectures), Sichuan (Ganzi, Aba, Liangshan prefectures), Gansu (Gannan, Wuwei, Zhangye prefectures), Xinjiang (Kashigar, Kezilesu, Hetian, Altai prefectures), whole of Tibet Autonomous Region and Qinghai; India – the 11 mountain states (Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand; Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, and Tripura) and Darjeeling district of West Bengal; Myanmar – the states of Kachin, Chin, Shan and Rakkhain; Nepal – whole country; Pakistan – North Western Frontier Province (NWFP), Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Northern Areas, Ajad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), and 12 districts of Baluchistan]'

In reply to Natalie Berry - UKC:

It makes more sense when the hyphen is included: Hindu Kush-Himalayas as in it spans from one region to the other. You also occasionally see Hindu Kush-Karakorum-Himalayas to mean the same thing. 

In reply to probablylost:

Ah, that makes much more sense. Thanks!

In reply to Natalie Berry - UKC:

You really want a dash, so Hindu Kush–Himalayas rather than Hindu Kush-Himalayas.

In reply to UKC/UKH News:

Is that really what the report says?  From my (brief) reading, the report summarises models considering mass change projections rather than actual numbers of glaciers.  The relation of ice mass to glacier numbers is presumably much more complex and harder to predict but I imagine that the existence (or otherwise) of a glacier will have the most impact on the hydrology of the valleys.  Rather depressing reading in either case...

In reply to felt:

You must be fun at parties.

In reply to MarkJH:

I read it as a third of the total mass/area rather than specific glaciers disappearing one by one. I can see how that sentence could be understood as talking about individual glaciers as you say, though. 

Every news report I've read has described it in those same terms, as 'one third of the region's glaciers' and so has Sergiu in his quote. I guess as you say, either way it's pretty awful!

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/world/asia/himalayas-glaciers-warming.ht...

In reply to Natalie Berry - UKC:

Interesting that a report that raises the distinct possibility that within our lifetime, millions of people will begin to loose their lives due to water shortages and heat stress, some folk decide to focus on correcting the acronym. 

In reply to Natalie Berry - UKC:

This peer reviewed study:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24102387?&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

monitored 2018 glaciers across the Himalayas for a decade and found that the vast majority (86.8%) were stable.  The net loss of ice over the study period was 0.2%.

In reply to webding:

a paper at odds with many others & unfortunately behind a paywall so most of us can't read it to see why its so different

In reply to webding:

Thanks for sharing that paper. How did you come by it? And have you read the full paper?

And did you notice (based on the abstract) the paper you refer appears to measures surface area rather than ice volume. The paper suggests a 0.2% net loss of surafce area, not as you state a 0.2% net loss of ice. I am no glaciologist, but I'd hazard a guess that area and volume is not a linear relationship?

The paper you refer, uses just two data points (early and late noughties). I was trained that it was unwise or unscientific to draw a conclusion from one paper regarding something as complex as the ice extent in the HK-H. Hence why it's probably wiser to stick with the conlcusions of the synthesis study orignianlly posted.

Heres the chapter on the Cryospher in case you want some bedtime reading + no paywall......

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-3-319-92288-1_7.pdf