Millions face glacier catastrophe (The Observer)

[Up2Late]

(More solid evidence of Global Warming, file this with the disappearing snows of Kilimanjaro)

Millions face glacier catastrophe

Global warming hits Himalayas

Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday November 20, 2005
The Observer

Nawa Jigtar was working in the village of Ghat, in Nepal, when the sound of crashing sent him rushing out of his home. He emerged to see his herd of cattle being swept away by a wall of water. Jigtar and his fellow villagers were able to scramble to safety. They were lucky: 'If it had come at night, none of us would have survived.'

Ghat was destroyed when a lake, high in the Himalayas, burst its banks. Swollen with glacier meltwaters, its walls of rock and ice had suddenly disintegrated. Several million cubic metres of water crashed down the mountain.

When Ghat was destroyed, in 1985, such incidents were rare - but not any more. Last week, scientists revealed that there has been a tenfold jump in such catastrophes in the past two decades, the result of global warming. Himalayan glacier lakes are filling up with more and more melted ice and 24 of them are now poised to burst their banks in Bhutan, with a similar number at risk in Nepal.

But that is just the beginning, a report in Nature said last week. Future disasters around the Himalayas will include 'floods, droughts, land erosion, biodiversity loss and changes in rainfall and the monsoon'.

<http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1646656,00.html?gusrc=rss>
(more at link above)

[rodeodance]

1. By 2010, a glacial lake catastrophe will happen every year.'

According to Nature, temperatures in the region have increased by more than 1C recently and are set to rise by a further 1.2C by 2050, and by 3C by the end of the century. This heating has already caused 24 of Bhutan's glacial lakes to reach 'potentially dangerous' status, according to government officials. Nepal is similarly affected.

'A glacier lake catastrophe happened once in a decade 50 years ago,' said UK geologist John Reynolds, whose company advises Nepal. 'Five years ago, they were happening every three years. By 2010, a glacial lake catastrophe will happen every year.'

An example of the impact is provided by Luggye Tsho, in Bhutan, which burst its banks in 1994, sweeping 10 million cubic metres of water down the mountain. It struck Panukha, 50 miles away, killing 21 people.

Now a nearby lake, below the Thorthormi glacier, is in imminent danger of bursting. That could release 50 million cubic metres of water, a flood reaching to northern India 150 miles downstream.

[GrumpyGreg]

2. Does this mean that wheat will grow in the Yukon? I am

definitely a dunce when it comes to this stuff.

[sam sarrha]

3. when the permafrost turns to slush and washes out to sea the erosion will

be disastrous.. probably bring on a gold rush for a while but the aluvium soil is a goner in a lot of places..