Khumbu glacier

The Khumbu Glacier at the foot of Mount Everest is apparently even more endangered by climate change than previously assumed. British glaciologists, who measured the ice temperature of the glacier in 2017 and 2018, point to this. At three drill sites up to an altitude of about 5,200 meters near Everest base camp, they used a specified adapted car wash unit to conduct hot water under high pressure into the ice. The scientists hung strings with temperature sensors in the resulting holes, the deepest of which reached about 130 meters deep into the ice. “The temperature range we measured was warmer than we expected – and hoped – to find,” says Duncan Quincey of Leeds University, leader of the “EverDrill” project.

Warmer than the outside air

The drill sites near Everest BC

According to the glaciologists’ study, the minimum ice temperature was minus 3.3 degrees Celsius, “with even the coldest ice being a full two degrees warmer than the mean annual air temperature”. A similar study carried out near Everest Base Camp in 1974 found ice that was two to three degrees colder. “’Warm’ ice is particularly vulnerable to climate change because even small increases in temperature can trigger melting,” explains Quincey. “Internal temperature has a significant impact on the complex dynamics of a glacier, including how it flows, how water drains through it and the volume of meltwater runoff.” Millions of people in the Himalayas and Hindu Kush are affected by these processes because they depend on glacier water, says the researcher.

“Water tower for Asia”

Five years ago, scientists at the University of Milan pointed out that the ice masses around Everest had shrunk by 13 percent over the past 50 years. “The Himalayan glaciers and ice caps are considered a water tower for Asia since they store and supply water downstream during the dry season,” said the Nepalese geoscientist Sudeep Thakuri at that time. “Downstream populations are dependent on the melt water for agriculture, drinking, and power production.”

Heidi Sand (© AthletenWerk/Bob Berger)

Heidi Sand knows how it is to accept a seemingly hopeless fight. “Since my cancer, I have a special relationship with probabilities and chances”, the 49-year-old German climber and sculptor write to me. “You have to believe in yourself and you should use any chance, no matter how small it is.” In 2010, Heidi was diagnosed with colon cancer at an advanced stage. She accepted the fight. Two years later, she climbed Mount Everest. In 2013, she summited Cho Oyu, her second eight-thousander. The following year, Sand and Billi Bierling were the first German women on top of Makalu. Now Heidi is committed to a climate protection project called “25zero”. During the upcoming climate summit in Paris, the Australian adventurer Tim Jarvis and his team want to point out the consequences of climate change for 25 still glaciated peaks at zero latitude, around the Equator. If nothing is done, says Jarvis, no ice or snow will remain on these mountains at the latest in 25 years – therefore “25zero”.

Six peaks on three continents

Mount Stanley

While a new climate change agreement will be debated in Paris starting next Monday, “25zero” teams will climb six mountains with melting glaciers in equatorial areas: Carstensz Pyramid (4,884 meters) in Indonesia, Mount Stanley (5,109 meters) in Uganda, Mount Kenya (5,199 meters), Mount Kilimanjaro (5,895 meters) in Tanzania, Chimborazo (6,268 meters) in Ecuador and Nevado del Tolima (5,215 meters) in Colombia. By sending live reports and pictures of these mountains, the adventurers want to show the decision-makers in Paris the already dramatic situation quite plainly. “I have decided to climb Mount Stanley, because the Rwenzori Mountains are particularly bad hit by climate change”, says Heidi. She will climb along with Tim Jarvis, the founder of “25zero”, and the Briton Ed Wardle. After his expedition with his Australian compatriot Peter Treseder in 1999, Jarvis was holding the world records for the fastest unsupported trip to the South Pole and for the longest unsupported Antarctica journey for a few years. Even after that, he made headlines with various expeditions in the Arctic and Antarctic. Wardle is a filmmaker and mountaineer who has scaled Everest already three times.

Glaciers in retreat

There is no more time to be lost, believes Heidi Sand. “When you’re for instance in Grindelwald in the Swiss Alps, you can see it quite clearly. 100 years ago, the great Grindelwald Glacier still ranged to the village. Today the glacier has melted so far that you must hike up six hours from the village”, says Heidi. “This year, the north faces in the Alps resembled south faces – hardly any ice or snow in the walls. So I had to postpone my next big project, the Eiger North Face, to next year.”

Optimist

Again and again, climate conferences have failed in the past. There was nothing more than hot air at the end. What makes Heidi confident that these Paris negotiations might end otherwise? “If I did not believe in the success and did not have an optimistic attitude that enabled me to achieve my goals, I would not take part in ‘25zero’”, Heidi replies. “We all have the belief and optimism to do our part to a better world.”

It’s melting away

200 meters as the crow flies away from my desk, nothing less than the future of the planet is negotiated. Until Friday representatives from around the world are debating at the World Conference Center Bonn on a new climate agreement. It is to be adopted at the global climate talks in Paris, which will begin in late November. Once again the negotiations are long and tough. The solidarity with the states that are already feeling the effects of climate change is within limits. In most cases economy beats ecology. But the clock is ticking. With only a few exceptions, glaciers are melting worldwide. Glacier Works, an organization founded by US mountaineer David Breashears in 2007, has impressively documented how far for instance the glaciers around Mount Everest have retreated during the past decades. Now the Dalai Lama has pointed to the consequences of climate change for his Tibetan homeland.

The Third Pole

“This blue planet is our only home and Tibet is its roof. As vital as the Arctic and Antarctic, it is the Third Pole”, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan Buddhists says in a video message (see below) from exile in India. “The Tibetan Plateau needs to be protected, not just for Tibetans but for the environmental health and sustainability of the entire world.”

The 80-year-old emphasizes that he wants people to understand his words not as a political message, but as a humanitarian.

Drinking water for more than one billion people

Even Chinese scientists have been warning for a long time about the effects of climate change on the glaciers in Tibet. The average temperature on the more than 4,000 meter high plateau has increased by 1.3 degrees Celsius over the past five decades and thus significantly faster than the global average. The Tibetan glaciers are the source of water in rivers that support about 1.3 billion people in Asia. Against this background, the Dalai Lama appeals to the young generation of the 21st century to become more engaged in protecting the planet – thus also fighting for the environment in the Himalayas, especially in Tibet. Will his message be heard by the negotiators here in Bonn and later in Paris? That would not be bad.

Tsho Rolpa in Nepal

Nepal has a problem with its glaciers. Over the past three decades, the 3808 glaciers in the Himalayan country have shrunk by about a quarter. The increased melt created some glacial lakes which scientists call ticking time bombs. One of the biggest of them, Tsho Rolpa, which is located about 100 kilometers northeast of Kathmandu, is estimated to contain between 90 and 100 million cubic meters of water by now. If the natural dam burst, it would have devastating consequences. This week, the Nepalese capital is hosting an international conference, during which more than 200 scientists from around the world exchange their findings about the impact of climate change on the high mountains of Asia – not only on the the Himalayas, but also on Karakoram, Hindu Kush, Tien Shan, Pamir and the Tibetan plateau.

Currently, more water …

Doris Duethmann

Among the scientists in Kathmandu is the German Doris Duethmann. The hydrologist from the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam is researching the water balance at the upper reaches of the river Tarim. “The Tarim runoffs have been increasing sharply over the past 40 years because the higher temperatures led to a greater glacier melt”, the scientist told me (before leaving for Nepal). The Tarim is more than 2000 kilometers long and thus the longest river in Central Asia. It flows north of the Taklamakan Desert and is among others fed by glacier runoff of the Tien Shan mountains including the seven-thousanders  Pik Pobedy (7439 meters) and Khan Tengri (7,010 meters). Especially the arid region at the edge of the Taklamakan is depending on the water from the mountains. In recent decades, the river Tarim has been increasingly tapped to irrigate fields. The strong glacier runoffs made it possible.

… later less

“People expect that it remains the way it is, but someday it will no longer be the case”,  Duethmann predicts. “Now they are living from the increased glacier melt. This will not be permanent, because the melt drain the glaciers. In the northern Tien Shan the ice has declined by 30 percent compared with 30, 40 years ago.” In other words: There is less and less ice that can melt, and water will be short someday. It is difficult to reconcile the different interests, says the hydrologist. On the one hand there are countries on the upper course of the river like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, who use the water of the mountains mainly to generate electricity, on the other hand countries on the lower course such as Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, which draw much water to irrigate their fields. “The theme of water holds a lot of potential for conflict”, says Doris Duethmann. This makes it all the more important to talk to each other – as the scientists do now at the conference in Kathmandu.