The world’s highest-altitude weather station has revealed an alarming trend: Human-induced climate change is melting glaciers on Mount Everest, the world’s tallest mountain.
In 2019, on a National Geographic and Rolex-sponsored expedition, a team of climate scientists took critical measurements of the South Col Glacier, located just before the mountain peak. The team set up a weather station in South Col to monitor conditions, and also removed a nearly ten-metre-long ice core from the tallest glacier to assess the effects of climate change on the roof of the world.
The research was published Feb. 3 in the journal Nature Climate and Atmospheric Science.
“This answers one of the big questions posed by our 2019 NGS/Rolex Mount Everest Discovery of whether the tallest glaciers on the planet are being impacted by human-induced climate change,” said Paul Mayewski, a glaciologist at the University of Maine and leader of the exploration study, in a press release. Mayewski continued: “The answer is a clear yes, and very serious [effects are seen] since the late 1990s.”
The glacier has changed from light snowdrift to denser ice over the past few decades, causing it to absorb more radiation from the sun. More heat means more melting and sublimation (the process of turning solid water into water vapor), which causes the glacier to thin.
Researchers say a thinning of about 50 meters has occurred in 25 years. This means that the glacier is thinning 80 times faster than it accumulated. About 2,000 years of ice accumulation have disappeared since the 1990s, and depending on the current rate of thinning, Everest’s glaciers could begin to lose decades of accumulated ice each year.
The team notes that stronger winds and a drop in relative humidity also played a role in melting, but rising air temperatures were responsible for most of the glacier mass loss. Three years ago, expedition operators working on Everest also noted that diminishing snow and ice cover had exposed the bodies of climbers who died on the climb.
The researchers also point out that glaciers are disappearing so fast that this will change the way expeditions climb the mountain in the coming decades. As the glacier’s snow continues to melt, the steep bedrock underneath will be exposed, making it much more difficult to get to the top of the mountain; may require different hardware and information.
Nearly 1 billion people in the region rely on freshwater melt from glaciers in the Himalayan mountain range. While glacier melt is currently increasing, its rapid depletion could pose a problem in the future and pose a potential threat to the region’s access to water.
There was also another finding about human effects on Everest during the 2019 expedition. Microplastics, including polyester and nylon, have been discovered in an area that scientists consider remote and undisturbed. These microplastics are thought to likely originate from clothing and climbing ropes.
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