Nepal holds tribute for disappearing glacier
KATHMANDU, Nepal (AFP) — Dozens trekked to Nepal's Yala glacier for a ceremony Monday to mark its rapid disappearance due to climate change and put a spotlight on global glacial retreat.
The Yala glacier, located between 5,170 and 5,750 meters above sea level, is in the Langtang Valley in northern Nepal.
Since 1974, the glacier has shrunk in area by 66 percent and retreated 784 meters, according to the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development.
Scientists warn it may eventually disappear by the 2040s if the warming trend continues, and might be among the first in Nepal to join the growing numbers of glaciers declared "dead" worldwide.
"In the 40 years I have studies this glacier, I have seen it halve with my own eyes. We worry that the next generation might not be able to see it," Sharad Prasad Joshi, a cryosphere specialist at ICIMOD, told Agence France-Presse.
Prayer flags fluttered Monday as Buddhist monks performed a ceremony for Yala, with the Himalayas towering behind them.
Two granite plaques were unveiled engraved with memorial messages in Nepali, English and Tibetan.
"This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it," part of the message in one of the plaques read.
The words were by Icelandic writer Andri Snaer Magnason, whose message is also at the site of the world's first glacier funeral in Iceland. Glacier funerals have also been held in Mexico, the United States and Switzerland.
The ceremony comes as the world marked near-record high global temperatures in April, according to the EU's climate monitor.
In its latest bulletin, the Copernicus Climate Change Service said that April was the second-hottest in its dataset, which draws on billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations.
All but one of the last 22 months exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the warming limit enshrined in the Paris agreement, beyond which major and lasting climate and environmental changes become more likely.
Time to act
Yala is one of seven glaciers in the 3,500 kilometer-long arc of the Hindu Kush Himalayas to have been monitored annually for a decade or more, according to ICIMOD.
Joshi said that the ceremony was also to honour the glacier as it has been an "open textbook" for young researchers and glaciologists. Himalayan glaciers, providing critical water to nearly two billion people, are melting faster than ever before due to climate change, exposing communities to unpredictable and costly disasters.
Experts say that on current melt rates, many glaciers worldwide will not survive the 21st century.
Last month, the United Nations said that all 19 of the world's glacier regions experienced a net loss of mass in 2024 for the third consecutive year.
Together, they lost 450 billion tonnes of mass, the organization said, citing new data from the Swiss-based World Glacier Monitoring Service.
Maheshwar Dhakal, chief at the Nepal government's climate change management division, said in a statement shared by ICIMOD that Nepal is at the frontlines of the impacts of temperature rise despite minimal emissions.
"We are urging world leaders to pay attention to the changes in mountain glaciers, such as Yala, because our own fate, and futures, is bound up in those of our frozen freshwater reserves," Dhakal said.
"Glacier loss is irreversible on human timescales. The time to act is now."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Korea Herald
4 days ago
- Korea Herald
Warning signs on climate flashing: scientists
PARIS (AFP) — From carbon pollution to sea-level rise to global heating, the pace and level of key climate change indicators are all in uncharted territory, more than 60 top scientists warned Thursday. Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels and deforestation hit a new high in 2024 and averaged, over the last decade, a record 53.6 billion tons per year — that is 100,000 tons per minute — of CO2 or its equivalent in other gases, they reported in a peer-reviewed update. Earth's surface temperature last year breached 1.5 degrees Celsius for the first time, and the additional CO2 humanity can emit with a two-thirds chance of staying under that threshold long-term — our 1.5 C "carbon budget" — will be exhausted in a couple of years, they calculated. Investment in clean energy outpaced investment in oil, gas and coal last year two-to-one, but fossil fuels account for more than 80 percent of global energy consumption, and growth in renewables still lags behind new demand. Included in the 2015 Paris climate treaty as an aspirational goal, the 1.5 C limit has since been validated by science as necessary for avoiding a catastrophically climate-addled world. The hard cap on warming to which nearly 200 nations agreed was "well below" two degrees, commonly interpreted to mean 1.7 C to 1.8 C. "We are already in crunch time for these higher levels of warming," co-author Joeri Rogelj, a professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London, told journalists in a briefing. "The next three or four decades is pretty much the timeline over which we expect a peak in warming to happen." No less alarming than record heat and carbon emissions is the gathering pace at which these and other climate indicators are shifting, according to the study, published in Earth System Science Data. Human-induced warming increased over the last decade at a rate "unprecedented in the instrumental record," and well above the 2010-2019 average registered in the UN's most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, in 2021. The new findings — led by the same scientists using essentially the same methods — are intended as an authoritative albeit unofficial update of the benchmark IPCC reports underpinning global climate diplomacy. They should be taken as a reality check by policymakers, the authors suggested. "I tend to be an optimistic person," said lead author Piers Forster, head of the University of Leed's Priestley Centre for Climate Futures. "But if you look at this year's update, things are all moving in the wrong direction." The rate at which sea levels have shot up in recent years is also alarming, the scientists said. After creeping up, on average, well under two millimetres per year from 1901 to 2018, global oceans have risen 4.3 millimiters annually since 2019. An increase in the ocean watermark of 23 centimeters — just over the width of an A4 sheet of paper — over the last 125 years has been enough to imperil many small island states and hugely amplify the destructive power of storm surges worldwide. An additional 20 centimeters of sea level rise by 2050 would cause $1 trillion in flood damage annually in the world's 136 largest coastal cities, earlier research has shown. Another indicator underlying all the changes in the climate system is Earth's so-called energy imbalance, the difference between the amount of solar energy entering the atmosphere and the smaller amount leaving it. So far, 91 percent of human-caused warming has been absorbed by oceans, sparing life on land. But the planet's energy imbalance has nearly doubled in the last 20 years, and scientists do not know how long oceans will continue to massively soak up this excess heat. Dire future climate impacts worse than what the world has already experienced are already baked in over the next decade or two. But beyond that, the future is in our hands, the scientists made clear. "We will rapidly reach a level of global warming of 1.5 C, but what happens next depends on the choices which will be made," said co-author and former IPCC co-chair Valerie Masson-Delmotte. The Paris Agreement's 1.5 C target allows for the possibility of ratcheting down global temperatures below that threshold before century's end. Ahead of a critical year-end climate summit in Brazil, international cooperation has been weakened by the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. President Donald Trump's dismantling of domestic climate policies means the United States is likely to fall short on its emissions reduction targets, and could sap the resolve of other countries to deepen their own pledges, experts say.
Korea Herald
13-05-2025
- Korea Herald
Nepal holds tribute for disappearing glacier
KATHMANDU, Nepal (AFP) — Dozens trekked to Nepal's Yala glacier for a ceremony Monday to mark its rapid disappearance due to climate change and put a spotlight on global glacial retreat. The Yala glacier, located between 5,170 and 5,750 meters above sea level, is in the Langtang Valley in northern Nepal. Since 1974, the glacier has shrunk in area by 66 percent and retreated 784 meters, according to the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development. Scientists warn it may eventually disappear by the 2040s if the warming trend continues, and might be among the first in Nepal to join the growing numbers of glaciers declared "dead" worldwide. "In the 40 years I have studies this glacier, I have seen it halve with my own eyes. We worry that the next generation might not be able to see it," Sharad Prasad Joshi, a cryosphere specialist at ICIMOD, told Agence France-Presse. Prayer flags fluttered Monday as Buddhist monks performed a ceremony for Yala, with the Himalayas towering behind them. Two granite plaques were unveiled engraved with memorial messages in Nepali, English and Tibetan. "This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it," part of the message in one of the plaques read. The words were by Icelandic writer Andri Snaer Magnason, whose message is also at the site of the world's first glacier funeral in Iceland. Glacier funerals have also been held in Mexico, the United States and Switzerland. The ceremony comes as the world marked near-record high global temperatures in April, according to the EU's climate monitor. In its latest bulletin, the Copernicus Climate Change Service said that April was the second-hottest in its dataset, which draws on billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations. All but one of the last 22 months exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the warming limit enshrined in the Paris agreement, beyond which major and lasting climate and environmental changes become more likely. Time to act Yala is one of seven glaciers in the 3,500 kilometer-long arc of the Hindu Kush Himalayas to have been monitored annually for a decade or more, according to ICIMOD. Joshi said that the ceremony was also to honour the glacier as it has been an "open textbook" for young researchers and glaciologists. Himalayan glaciers, providing critical water to nearly two billion people, are melting faster than ever before due to climate change, exposing communities to unpredictable and costly disasters. Experts say that on current melt rates, many glaciers worldwide will not survive the 21st century. Last month, the United Nations said that all 19 of the world's glacier regions experienced a net loss of mass in 2024 for the third consecutive year. Together, they lost 450 billion tonnes of mass, the organization said, citing new data from the Swiss-based World Glacier Monitoring Service. Maheshwar Dhakal, chief at the Nepal government's climate change management division, said in a statement shared by ICIMOD that Nepal is at the frontlines of the impacts of temperature rise despite minimal emissions. "We are urging world leaders to pay attention to the changes in mountain glaciers, such as Yala, because our own fate, and futures, is bound up in those of our frozen freshwater reserves," Dhakal said. "Glacier loss is irreversible on human timescales. The time to act is now."
Korea Herald
17-04-2025
- Korea Herald
Webb telescope spots strong 'hints'of life on distant planet
PARIS (AFP) — Astronomers announced Thursday that they had detected the most promising "hints" of potential life on a planet beyond our solar system, though other scientists expressed skepticism. There has been vigorous debate in scientific circles about whether the planet K2-18b, which is 124 light years away in the Leo constellation, could be an ocean world capable of hosting microbial life. Using the James Webb Space Telescope, a British-US team of researchers detected signs of two chemicals in the planet's atmosphere long considered to be "biosignatures" indicating extraterrestrial life. On Earth, the chemicals dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and dimethyl disulfide are produced only by life, mostly microscopic marine algae called phytoplankton. The researchers emphasized caution, saying that more observations were needed to confirm these findings, and that they were not announcing a definitive discovery. But the implications could be huge, according to Nikku Madhusudhan, a Cambridge University astrophysicist and lead author of the study, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. "What we are finding at this point are hints of possible biological activity outside the solar system," he told a press conference. "Frankly, I think this is the closest we have come to seeing a feature that we can attribute to life." But outside experts pointed to disputes over previous discoveries about the exoplanet, adding that these chemicals could have been created by unknown means having nothing to do with life. More than eight times the mass of Earth and 2.5 times as big, K2-18b is a rare exoplanet that orbits its star in a habitable or "goldilocks" zone. This means it is neither too hot nor too cold to have liquid water, considered the most important ingredient for life. Telescopes observe such far-off exoplanets when they cross in front of their star, allowing astronomers to analyze how molecules block the light streaming through their atmosphere. In 2023, the Webb telescope detected methane and carbon dioxide in K2-18b's atmosphere, the first time such carbon-based molecules were detected on an exoplanet in a habitable zone. It also detected weak signals of the chemical DMS, leading astronomers to turn Webb towards the planet again a year ago, this time using its mid-infrared instrument to detect different wavelengths of light. They found much stronger signs of the chemicals, though still well below the "five sigma" threshold of statistical significance scientists seek for such discoveries. Even if the results are confirmed, it would not necessarily mean that the planet is home to life. Last year, scientists found traces of DMS on a comet, which suggested it can be produced in non-organic ways. However the concentration of the chemical observed on K2-18b appears to be thousands of times stronger than levels on Earth, strongly suggesting a biological origin, Madhusudhan said. Are we alone? K2-18b has long been considered the premier candidate for a "hycean planet" — an ocean world bigger than Earth with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere. These planets would not be expected to be home to intelligent alien life, but rather tiny microbes similar to those in Earth's oceans billions of years ago. Some research has questioned whether the currently proposed hycean planets are too close to their stars to support liquid water, including K2-18b, which orbits its star every 33 days. Raymond Pierrehumbert, a planetary physics professor at Oxford University, has conducted separate research indicating K2-18b is too hot for life. If the planet did have water, it would be "hellishly hot" and uninhabitable, he told Agence France-Presse, adding that oceans of lava were more plausible. Sara Seager, a professor of planetary science at MIT, called for patience, pointing to previous claims of water vapor in K2-18b's atmosphere that turned out to be a different gas. And within our solar system, Mars, Venus and moons such as Saturn's Enceladus all have "more chance to be realised as life-hosting," she told Agence France-Presse. Madhusudhan estimated that it would take just 16 to 24 more hours of Webb's time to confirm their findings, which could happen in the next few years. Even beyond K2-18b, Madhusudhan said Webb and future telescopes could allow humanity to discover life outside our home planet sooner than one might think. "This could be the tipping point, where suddenly the fundamental question of whether we're alone in the universe is one we're capable of answering," he said.
