Glaciers of the Himalayas : Climate Change, Black Carbon, and Regional Resilience
Melting glaciers and the loss of seasonal snow pose significant risks to the stability of water resources in South Asia. The 55,000 glaciers in the Himalaya, Karakoram, and Hindu Kush (HKHK) mountain ranges store more freshwater than any region outside of the North and South Poles. Their ice rese...
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Washington, DC: World Bank
2021
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| Online Access: | https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/976841622778070962/glaciers-of-the-himalayas-climate-change-black-carbon-and-regional-resilience http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35600 |
| Summary: | Melting glaciers and the loss of seasonal snow pose significant risks to the stability of water
resources in South Asia. The 55,000 glaciers in the Himalaya, Karakoram, and Hindu Kush
(HKHK) mountain ranges store more freshwater than any region outside of the North and
South Poles. Their ice reserves feed into three major river basins in South Asia—the Indus,
Ganges, and Brahmaputra—that are home to 750 million people. One major regional driver of the accelerating glacier melt is climate change, which is
altering the patterns of temperature and precipitation. A second driver may be deposits of
anthropogenic black carbon (BC), which increase the glaciers’ absorption of solar radiation
and raise air temperatures. BC is generated by human activity both inside and outside of
South Asia, and it may be meaningfully reduced by policy actions taken by the South Asian
countries themselves. Glaciers of the Himalayas: Climate Change, Black Carbon, and Regional Resilience
investigates the extent to which the BC reduction policies of South Asian countries may
affect glacier formation and melt within the context of a changing global climate. It assesses
the relative impact of each source of black carbon on snow and glacier dynamics. The
authors simulate how BC emissions interact with projected climate scenarios, estimate the
extent to which these glacial processes affect water resources in downstream areas of these
river basins, and present scenarios until 2040. |
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