Himalayan sherpas bugged by the sight of house flies at 5,000m—another sign of climate change

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/12/himalayas-nepal-climate-change

Himalayan sherpas bugged by the sight of house flies at 5,000m

House flies at Everest basecamp are another sign of climate change that is melting glaciers with worrying speed

John Vidal
guardian.co.uk, Monday 12 October 2009 14.12 BST

Earlier this year http://www.panda.org/about_our_earth/aboutcc/problems/people_at_risk/personal_stories/witness_stories/?uNewsID=140221">Dawa Steven Sherpa was resting at Everest base camp when he and his companions heard something buzzing. "What the heck is that?" asked the young Nepali climber. They searched and found a big black house fly, something unimaginable just a few years ago when no insect could have survived at 5,360 metres.

"It's happened twice this year - the Himalayas are warming up and changing fast," says Dawa, who only took up climbing seriously in 2006, but in a few years has climbed Everest twice as well as two 8,000m peaks in Tibet.

"What I do is climb. It's a family business. And what we see is the Himalayan glaciers melting. It's not a seasonal thing any more. It's rapid. It's so apparent.

"Look at the walls and slopes of the Khumbu glacier . "You can see a clear line where the black rock becomes white. That's where it's been exposed to the sun. That means metres of thick ice have melted in just a few decades," he says.

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