{"id":508,"date":"2023-03-26T19:18:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-26T10:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/?p=508"},"modified":"2024-07-03T19:28:14","modified_gmt":"2024-07-03T10:28:14","slug":"himalayas-warming-faster-than-global-average-cse-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/?p=508","title":{"rendered":"Himalayas warming faster than global average: CSE report"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Himalayas warming faster than global average: CSE report The mountain range provides water almost 40% of India\u2019s population.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The ice on the himalayas are melting faster than expected due to global warming (Photo credit: Depositphotos)<\/em>

New Delhi:<\/strong> The Himalayas<\/strong> are melting and faster than we can imagine. \u201cThe precipitation has declined and snowfall is delayed every year and over all, the Himalayas<\/strong> are warming faster than the global average,\u201d the State of Environment (SoE) Report 2023<\/strong> has warned.

The Himalayas provide water \u2013 directly and indirectly through glacier-fed rivers \u2013 to more than 1.3 billion people. This includes almost 40% of India\u2019s population spread over the Indus, Gangetic and the Brahmaputra basins. The Himalayas also provide livelihood and ecosystem services to more than 210 million people.

One can envision the catastrophe that the world is headed for when a steadily declining snowfall melts away faster due to the rising global temperature.

\u201cAs the temperature rise triggers the rapid melting of glaciers, which is the main source of water for people living there, it has affected lives and livelihoods,\u201d pointed out Raju Sajwan and Akshit Sangomla, authors of the chapter on the Himalayas in the SoE report released on Thursday.

The fortnightly document issued by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Thursday showed a \u2018Large Deficit\u2019 \u2013 as much as -65% \u2013 precipitation departure from normal in Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh together for the period from March 1 to 22. For Leh, the precipitation was a -91% departure from the normal.

\u201cEarlier, even the months of January had showed below normal precipitation. Leh district received below normal snowfall in February too. In March, there was some snowfall, but overall, there has been deficit rainfall in winter. Only exception was Kargil and Zanskar region that received good snowfall,\u201d Dr Sonum Lotus, IMD\u2019s chief for the region, told News9 Plus.

Wildlife conservationist Karma Sonam is not surprised. \u201cWhen I was young, it snowed heavily right through December till spring and it would actually be 3-4 feet high. The last few years, the snowfall has been steadily declining and this year, we had so less snowfall even in January, February and March this year,\u201d Karma told News9 Plus on phone from his village near Leh.

In India the Himalayas are spread over Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. Over an expanse of 2,500 kilometres, the Himalayas boast the largest repository of snow and ice in the world after the two poles.

In 2019, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) had released a landmark report on the Hindukush Himalayas. The report said a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to the pre-industrial era temperature (between 1850 and 1900) would be \u201ctoo hot\u201d for the Hindu Kush Himalayas. It will lead to a 2 degrees temperature rise in the high reaches of the Himalayas. It would impact glaciers, destabilising Asia\u2019s rivers and endangering lives and livelihoods of millions.

The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE)\u2019s SoE report for 2023 covers an extensive gamut of subjects and assessments, ranging from climate change, Himalayas, agriculture, air pollution, water, plastics, forests and biodiversity, among other topics.

Speaking at the release of the SoE report, Sunita Narain, Director General, CSE, said: \u201cThe good news is that environment is now mainstream, we are all outraged at how climate change is devastating our future. But the bad news is that we are not acting at the scale of the devastation that we see around us. We need to take more deliberate steps to reverse the damage.\u201d

On Wednesday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres had warned that major Himalayan rivers such as the Indus, the Ganges and Brahmaputra, all hugely important for India, could see reductions in their flows as glaciers and ice sheets recede over the coming decades due to global warming.

\u201cGlaciers are critical to all life on earth. Over centuries, they carved out the landmasses we call home. Today, they cover 10 per cent of our world. Glaciers are also the world\u2019s water towers,\u201d Guterres said in his remarks to an event on the International Year of Glaciers\u2019 Preservation.

(This story first appeared on news9live.com on Mar 26, 2023 and can be read\u00a0here.<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Himalayas warming faster than global average: CSE report The mountain range provides water almost 40% of India\u2019s population. The ice on the himalayas are melting faster than expected due to … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":509,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=508"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":524,"href":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508\/revisions\/524"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/niveditakhandekar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}