Melting glaciers threaten 'Nepal tsunami'

Nepal —

Over two decades, Funuru Sherpa has watched the lake above his native village of Dengboche in Nepal's Himalayas grow, as the glacier that feeds it melts.

The 29-year-old, who runs a busy Internet cafe for tourists visiting the Everest region, remembers his grandfather telling him that 50 years ago the lake did not exist.

"Before, it was all ice," he told AFP in the eastern Himalayan town of Lukla, in the shadow of Mount Everest.

"This is proof that the glaciers in the high Himalayas are melting. And that must be because the temperatures have gone up."

Scientists say the Imja Glacier above Dengboche is retreating by about 70 metres (230 feet) a year, and the melting ice has formed a huge lake that could devastate villages downstream if it bursts.

The trend is not new. Nepal's International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), which has studied the Himalayas for three decades, says many of the country's glaciers have been retreating for centuries.

But ICIMOD glaciologist Samjwal Ratna Bajracharya said this was now happening at an alarming speed, with temperatures in the Himalayas rising at a much faster rate than the global average.

"Our studies of the past 30 years show that the temperatures (in the Himalayas) are rising up to eight times faster than the global average. Melting is taking place higher and faster," Bajracharya told AFP.

"The melting of glaciers and formation of glacier lakes is a key indicator of the temperature rise. And lately, we have seen massive ice melt."

Nepal has more than 2,300 glacial lakes and experts say at least 20 are in danger of bursting.

At almost one square kilometre (0.38 square miles), the Imja lake is the country's second biggest, estimated to hold 36 million cubic metres (47 million cubic yards) of water, and is considered the biggest flood threat.

It is a subject close to the heart of Nepalese mountaineer Apa Sherpa, who has climbed Everest a record 19 times.

In 1985 Apa Sherpa lost his house and farm when the Dig Tsho glacial lake burst, causing a giant wave to flow down the mountain.

Seven people were killed by the flood, which swept away bridges and houses and destroyed a new hydropower station.

"For me, climate change is personal," said the climber, who dedicated his latest Everest expedition to raising awareness of the impact of climate change on mountain communities.

"There's probably no one who can relate to this issue in the way that I can."

Information about how many people would be affected by a glacial lake bursting remains limited, but experts say the floodwaters could reach as far as Nepal's southern planes and beyond.

Environment secretary Uday Raj Sharma said last week the bursting of the Imja lake would be like a "Nepalese tsunami," comparing it with the 2004 Indian Ocean disaster in which around 220,000 people died.

The government has asked international donors for help in tackling the hazardous glacial lakes, which will be discussed at regional talks here next week aimed at highlighting the dangers climate change poses to the Himalayas.

But experts say there are no easy solutions.

The mountain communities most at risk are often reluctant to leave their homes, while draining the lakes is expensive and dangerous and does not always work.

Ten years ago Nepal launched a three-million-dollar project funded by the Dutch government to lower the water level in the country's biggest glacial lake, Tsho Rolpa, in the eastern Himalayas.

The lake had grown from 0.23 square kilometres in 1957 to 1.65 square kilometres in 1997 and threatened villages and a major hydropower plant under construction downstream.

Engineers cut a channel 70 metres long and seven metres wide into the side of the lake and successfully lowered the water level, reducing the risk of it bursting its banks.

But ICIMOD's Bajracharya said the project was expensive and had only reduced rather than eliminated the risk of a flood.

"We spent three million dollars without actually solving the problem," he said, calling on the government to focus instead on creating awareness programmes and early warning systems for communities at risk.

Pasang Omo is a father of three who lives in the village of Shomare in the eastern Himalayas, which experts say would likely be wiped out if the Imja lake burst.

He agrees that the government has not done enough to help the mountain communities most at risk.

"Everyone comes to us and tell us a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood will sweep through our villages. But it doesn't do us any good," said Omo, 45, who works as a porter for trekkers.

"It?s like telling someone they are sick but not giving them a cure."

Vicious forest fires in Nepal raise climate change questions

The forest fires that recently flared up in Nepal raise important questions about the effects of climate change on the Tibetan Plateau, writes Navin Singh Khadka.

The forest fires that flared unusually viciously in many of Nepal's national parks and conserved areas this dry season have left conservationists worrying if climate change played a role.

At least four protected areas were recently on fire for an unusually long time. Satellite imagery from US space agency NASA showed most of the big fires were in and around the national parks along the country's northern areas bordering Tibet. Active fires were recorded in renowned conservation success stories like the Annapurna, Kanchanjunga, Langtang and Makalu Barun national parks. The extent of the loss of flora and fauna is not yet known.

Press reports said more than 100 yaks were killed by fire in the surrounding areas of the Kanjanchanga National Park in eastern Nepal. Trans-Himalayan parks host rare species such as snow leopards, red pandas and several endangered birds.

More than the loss of plants and animals, the carbon dioxide emitted by the fires was a matter of concern, according to Ghanashyam Gurung, a director at WWF's Nepal office. Some of the national parks in the plains bordering India were also on fire, but those caused less concern among conservationists and forest officials.

"Fires in the protected areas in the plain lands can be controlled easily because we have logistics and manpower ready for that - and that is what we did this time," said Laxmi Manandhar, spokesman for Nepal's Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation.

"But in the national parks in the Himalayan region, we could hardly do anything because of the difficult geography. Nor do we have facilities of pouring water using planes and helicopters."

Forest fires in Nepal's jungles and protected areas are not uncommon during the dry season between October and January. Most of the fires come about as a consequence of the "slash and burn" practice that farmers employ for better vegetation and agricultural yields. But this time the fires remained out of control even in the national parks in the Himalayan region where the slash and burn practice is uncommon. In some of the protected areas, the fires flared up even after locals and officials tried to put them out for several days.

So, why were the fires so different this time? "The most obvious reason was the unusually long dry spell this year," says Gurung, just back in Kathmandu from Langtang National Park to the north of the capital. "The dryness has been so severe that pine trees in the Himalayan region are thoroughly dry even on the top, which means even a spark is enough to set them on fire."

For nearly six months, no precipitation has fallen across most of the country - the longest dry spell in recent history, according to meteorologists. "This winter was exceptionally dry," says Department of Hydrology and Meteorology chief Nirmal Rajbhandari. "We have seen winter becoming drier and drier in the last three or four years, but this year has set the record."

Rivers are running at their lowest, and because most of Nepal's electricity comes from hydropower, the country has been suffering power cuts up to 20 hours a day. Experts at the department said the severity of dryness fits in the pattern of increasing extreme weather Nepal has witnessed in recent years.

Had it not been for recent drizzles, conservationists say some of the national parks would still be on fire. They point to "cloud burst phenomena" – huge rainfall within a short span of time during monsoons, and frequent, sudden downpours in the Himalayan foothills – as more examples of extreme weather events. "Seeing all these changes happening in recent years, we can contend that this dryness that led to so much fire is one of the effects of climate change," said Rajbhandari.

Anil Manandhar, head of WWF Nepal, had this to ask: are we waiting for a bigger disaster to admit that it is climate change? "The weather pattern has changed, and we know that there are certain impacts of climate change."

However, climate-change expert Arun Bhakta Shrestha, of the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), was cautious about drawing conclusions. "The prolonged dryness this year, like other extreme events in recent years, could be related to climate change but there is no proper basis to confirm that. The reason [why there is no confirmation] is lack of studies, observation and data that could have helped to reach into some conclusion regarding the changes."

Indeed, there has been no proper study of the impacts of climate change on the region: not just in Nepal but in the entire Hindu Kush Himalayas. This is the reason why the region has been dubbed as a "white spot" by experts, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Limited studies have shown that temperature in the Himalayas has been increasing on average by 0.06 degrees Celsius annually, causing glaciers to melt and retreat faster. The meltdown has been rapidly filling up many glacial lakes that could break their moraines and burst out, sweeping away everything downstream. In Nepal and neighbouring countries, these "glacial lake outburst floods" and monsoon-related floods resulting from erratic rainfalls are at present the most talked-about disasters in the context of climate change.

If conservationists' and meteorologists' latest fears mean anything, forest fires may also be something that would be seen as one of the climate impacts.

In the wake of the 2007 United Nations climate change conference in Bali, Nepal has been preparing to join an international effort known as Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD). But if the forest fires it saw this year became a regular phenomenon, the country will instead be emitting increased carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - a case of climate science's not very aptly-named "positive feedback".

The Guardian