Glaciers of the Himalayas: Climate Change, Black Carbon, and Regional Resilience
Muthukumara Mani
Abstract
Melting glaciers and the loss of seasonal snow pose significant risks to the stability of water \nresources in South Asia. The 55,000 glaciers in the Himalaya, Karakoram, and Hindu Kush \n(HKHK) mountain ranges store more freshwater than any region outside of the North and \nSouth Poles. Their ice reserves feed into three major river basins in South Asia—the Indus, \nGanges, and Brahmaputra—that are home to 750 million people. One major regional driver of the accelerating glacier melt is climate change, which is \naltering the patterns of temperature and precipitation. A second driver may be deposits of \nanthropogenic black carbon (BC), which increase the glaciers’ absorption of solar radiation \nand raise air temperatures. BC is generated by human activity both inside and outside of \nSouth Asia, and it may be meaningfully reduced by policy actions taken by the South Asian \ncountries themselves. Glaciers of the Himalayas: Climate Change, Black Carbon, and Regional Resilience \ninvestigates the extent to which the BC reduction policies of South Asian countries may \naffect glacier formation and melt within the context of a changing global climate. It assesses \nthe relative impact of each source of black carbon on snow and glacier dynamics. The \nauthors simulate how BC emissions interact with projected climate scenarios, estimate the \nextent to which these glacial processes affect water resources in downstream areas of these \nriver basins, and present scenarios until 2040.