Satellite images show Himalayan glacier receded 1.5 km in 30 years

New Delhi- For the second time in two weeks, Indian scientist have said glaciers in the Himalayas were retreating while refusing to hazard a guess whether it was due to global warming or just cyclical phenomenon.

The Times of Indian newspaper quoting a leading space scientist as saying satellite images of the Gangotri glacier in the Himalayas show that its snowline has receded by 1.5 kilometers in the past 30 years.

The report also said that Alpine vegetation has now started growing at a higher altitude than it used to a few decades ago.

R.R. Navalgund, director of Space Application Centre at Ahmedabad has been quoted as saying: "We have looked at snowy glaciers, some of them in the past 20 years, specially the ones at lower latitudes and altitudes, have retreated. It is difficult to say whether it is due to global climate change. It could be a part of the inter-glacial period and other related phenomena," he said.

Gangotri glacier is located in Uttarakhand state region that borders China. The glacier is the sources of River Ganges, considered a holy waterway by the Hindus in India. The glacier is about 30 kilometers long (19 miles) and 2 to 4 km (1 to 2 mi) wide.

Indian Space Research Organization's (ISRO) documentation of coral reefs have also shown bleaching across the coastline with reefs around the Indian sub-continent are facing maximum impact - not so much in the Andaman and Nicobar islands located in the Arabian Sea, but in other parts.

India created an international row two weeks ago when it challenged a globally accepted view that the Himalayan glaciers were receding due to global warming by publishing a discussion paper which says that the glaciers, although shrinking in volume and constantly showing a retreating front, have not in any way exhibited any abnormal annual retreat of the order that some glaciers in Alaska and Greenland have reported.

Brought out by V.K. Raina, a former Deputy Director-General of the Geological Survey of India, for the Ministry of Environment and Forests, the discussion paper called “Glacial Studies, Glacial Retreat and Climate Change” on the Himalayan glaciers points out that it was premature to make a statement that the glaciers were retreating abnormally because of global warming.

The study says a glacier is affected by a range of physical features and a complex interplay of climatic factors, and it is, therefore, unlikely that the snout movement of any glacier can be claimed to be the result of periodic climate variation until many centuries of observations become available.

While glacier movements are primarily due to climate and snowfall, snout movements appear to be peculiar to each glacier, the paper adds.

Releasing the documents, India's Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh said that while most Himalayan glaciers were retreating, some were advancing as well. This included the Siachen glacier, also located in the Himalayas.

“Some glaciers are retreating at a declining rate, like the Gangotri glacier and the overall health of the Himalayan glaciers was poor as the debris cover had reached alarming proportions,” he said, citing the paper.

The minister, who studied engineering at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) maintains that there is no conclusive scientific evidence to show that global warming was resulting in the glacial retreats.

He says that contrary to what most believe, there can be no comparison between the Arctic glaciers and the Himalayan glaciers, as the former are at a sea-level and the latter at a very high altitude.

The Himalayan glaciers feed major rivers flowing through India, Pakistan, China, Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar.

“If we see the cumulative average of rate of retreat over the past 100 years, no glacier has deviated from that,” said Raina.

Using the Gangotri glacier as an example, Raina said: “This glacier is 30km long. Even if we assume it retreats at the rate of 30m a year, it will still take 1,000 years to disappear.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its fourth assessment report in 2007, said that Himalayan glaciers are retreating faster than in any other part of the world, and if this continues, they are likely to disappear by 2035, or perhaps sooner.

The IPCC, which is the leading body for assessing climate change and established by the United Nations Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization, attributed the receding and thinning of Himalayan glaciers primarily to global warming.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, blasted the research, calling it "unsubstantiated" and said “ We do need more extensive measurement of the Himalayan range but it is clear from satellite pictures what is happening." He likened the explanations to "climate change deniers and school boy science".

Raina admits in his paper that there is a lack of available data. For the moment long-term data exists for only 20 to 30 Himalayan glaciers and that there was only one automated weather station recording climatic data in the Himalayas, he said.

According to Raina, all glaciers under observation in the Himalayan region during the past three decades have shown cumulative negative mass balance (determined by annual snow precipitation). Degradation of the glacier mass has been the highest in Jammu and Kashmir state, relatively lower in Himachal Pradesh region, even less in Uttarakhand, and the lowest in Sikkim — showing a declining trend from the north-west to the north-east.

Irrespective on latitudinal difference, glacier melt contributes to about 25-30 per cent of the total discharge of glacier ice, with maximum discharge in mid-July and August.

“There are a number of scientific reports, including in the IPCC, that there is a clear threat,” said Vinuta Gopal, climate and energy campaign manager at Greenpeace India. “The time now is not about trying to find conclusive evidence; the time now is for action.”

Some scientists say research and field data are too limited to conclude a direct link.

“There is no field data to corroborate that the glaciers will disappear in the next 20-30 years. The range has 9,000 glaciers and we study about 30. And whichever we have studied, we need more detailed data. If we want to study glacier behavior, we need to monitor for 8-10 years, but we only manage two years at most,” said R.K. Ganjoo, director of the Jammu University's regional center on Himalayan glaciology.

Shakeel Ahmad Romshoo, associate professor, department of geology and geophysics at the University of Kashmir, said that although very few glaciers have been studied and data is inadequate, it is evident that global warming affects glaciers.

“Out of those that have been studied, in Himachal (Pradesh), Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir, there is no doubt that they are retreating and it is due to increase in temperature,” Romshoo said. “But we don't have enough data to establish by how much.”

“The effect of black carbon on Himalayan glaciers, which is a highly contested viewpoint, will also be studied,” according to minister Ramesh.

Shresth Tayal, a glaciologist with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in New Delhi, rejected new research from an Indian scientist presented by Ramesh that denied the link between rising temperatures and receding ice.

"This report is incomplete. It has been written with a biased approach," said Tayal, who labeled the findings "self-contradictory".

"Do you think any scientist needs to prove that warming causes melting of ice? If there is heat, ice is bound to melt." Tayal criticized the Indian government for endorsing the report, saying it should have analyzed the results before making it public.