Karakorum og Himalaya rummer den største ismasse udenfor polerne og er vandkilde for 1,3 milliarder i regionen – andre studier peger på afsmeltning i Himalaya, men kun 10 af 54.000 isbræer undersøges regelmæssigt og grundigt.
Some glaciers on Asia’s Karakoram mountains are defying the global trend and getting thicker, say researchers, according to BBC online Sunday.
A French team used satellite data to show that glaciers in part of the Karakoram range, to the west of the Himalayan region, are putting on mass.
The response of Himalayan glaciers to global warming has been a hot topic ever since the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which contained the erroneous claim that ice from most of the region could disappear by 2035.
Although often regarded as part of the Himalayas, the Karakoram range is technically a separate chain that includes K2, the world’s second-highest peak.
The French scientists found that between 1999 and 2008 the mass of the glaciers in this 5.615 sq km region of the Karakoram increased marginally, although there were wide variations between individual glaciers.
Why this should be is not clear, though it is well known from studies in other parts of the world that climate change can cause extra precipitation (nedbør) into cold regions which, if they are cold enough, gets added to the existing mass of ice.
The trend contrasts with other parts of the wider Himalayas-Hindu Kush region, home to an estimated 210 million people and where glaciers act as fresh water stores for about 1,3 billion living in river basins below.
Late last year, the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (Icimod) released data showing that across 10 regularly studied glaciers, the rate of ice loss had doubled since the 1980s.
However, it also made clear just how sparse data is from the region, finding only these 10 intensively studied glaciers among a total of more than 54.000, BBC notes.
