Tibetan glacier melt: scientists, climate change, a tricky region
Tuesday, February 17, 2009 17:00
Last Thursday the China Environment Forum at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC hosted a fascinating presentation, “Temperatures Rising: Climate Change, Water and the Himalayas.” A web cast will soon be archived here here.
Speakers included:
- Isabel Hilton, chinadialogue
- Kenneth Hewitt, Wilfrid Laurier University, Cold Regions Research Centre
- Katherine Morton, The Australian National University
This was the first presentation I’d seen that emphasized not only the science but also the delicate implications of glacier melt in this particular region of the world – the geological complexities, the geopolitical hotspots, the enormous population stakes.
If there was a common theme, it was uncertainty. No one disputed the overall trend – within 50 years, the glaciers on the Tibetan plateau, which indirectly supply 40 percent of the world’s population with water – may have largely vanished. Yet there are significant wrinkles and gaps in what we know.
Research forays on the Tibetan plateau have been limited, in part by extreme terrain, in part by political sensitivities. More data is shared between international partners, such as China and India, than in the past, but any information that might be considered relevant to national security is likely to be squelched. Scientists now have sophisticated information from satellites, but as chinadialogue’s Isabel Hilton pointed out, unless you’re also collecting data on the ground, the possibility for error or misinterpretation is high.
Kenneth Hewitt, a climate scientist at Wilfrid Laurier University’s Cold Regions Research Centre in Canada, explained the challenges in accounting for varying topography, altitudes, and weather systems on the plateau (it’s easy to forget how vast this region is). Some glaciers are clearly receding; in other cases, the picture is more complicated. He also named two points of uncertainty regarding impacts: we don’t know how climate change will impact avalanches in Tibet, or the monsoon season in Pakistan (most ice melting occurs during summer monsoon months).
Katherine Morton of Australian National University has spent a lot of time on the ground with indigenous communities in western China. She is concerned that those in a position to most directly observe climate impacts have few avenues for transmitting what they learn (I touched on a similar point in a recent article for The Christian Science Monitor).
Oh, and it’s nice to make your acquaintance online. I’m a writer covering international environmental issues for a variety of publications; currently I split my time between Washington, DC and extended research trips in Asia. As there’s always material from interviews and events that doesn’t make it into final articles, Rich has invited me to post occasional snippets that might be of interest. Please feel free to email me at Christina.Larson [ar] gmail.com.
