Climate Change in Himalaya

The 3-month long assignment has come to the end, but the journey with the Himalayas never ends. Writing this blog is just like a self-paced trekking deep into the Himalayas, along with the magnificent landscape and incredible flora and fauna, the environmental change is also taking place in the Third Pole in recent decades. Natural climate variability and increased human activities are known to have contributed to glacial environment change, forest degradation, floods and GLOFs, landcover and biodiversity loss associated with ecosystem disturbance, which in turn affects the global climate system regulation and leads to vulnerabilities in social-economic developments at many levels. Before it is too late, more attention and actions with precise steps are needed from governments, research institutions, NGOs, local communities, you, me and everyone, to safeguard the Himalayan environment and human well-being. I will keep this blog open for more discoveries along the journey in the Himalay...

So far we have talked about the climate change, biodiversity loss and ecosystem disturbance causing various issues in the Himalayas, these issues need to be closely monitored and studied in order to reduce scientific uncertainty and provide a science-lead analysis for policymakers to address.  The well-known complex terrain in the Himalayas with its high variability of landmass and topography, make the ground monitoring and measurement  less successful, point data  from weather or hydrological station are not good enough to be a representative in certain areas.  Data coverage and quality are of high importance for developing environmental  models, incorrect parameters will result in significant  model error , thereby the cutting-edge geospatial technologies - Remote Sensing & GIS have been applied and funded to bridge the spatial information gap for the Himalayas since  two decades  ago.   By definition,  Remo...

Black Carbon (BC) has a  noticeable   history  over the past 150 years in Hindu-Kush-Himalayan (HKH) and Tibetan Plateau (TP),  from pre-industry to modern periods. An analysis  on Mt. Everest ice core during 1860–2000 and based on  Single Particle Soot Photometer  demonstrates that BC concentration from 1975-2000 shows about 3-fold increase compared to the background level of 1860-1975, indicating BC from anthropogenic source has been introduced and transported to highland of Himalayas.   What is black carbon BC is derived from incomplete combustion of organic matter from both natural and anthropogenic sources, in the form of carbonaceous aerosols, heating the  aerosol-planetary boundary layer  with a net warming effect  by absorbing and scattering sunlight. BC can also be deposited onto snow and ice, darkening the surfaces and reducing their albedo feedback . Both mechanisms ar...

Source: http://climateobserver.org/unfccc-last-round-negotiations-limas-climate-summit-opens-bonn/ “ We can seal the deal with you on the condition that no funding goes to India!”  said my classmates representing the States to another group representing China, in the Global Environmental Change class of last week, a role-play simulation of  COP23 climate negotiation.  “ We cannot use the excuse of money – or the lack of it – not to do anything. Yes, developed countries have to make financial commitments, but what if they don’t?”  Charles Hopkins, from international humanitarian charity  CARE International  in Ethiopia called for government  especially those in Africa , to make the policies for disaster management in place.  This urgent appeal sent by Mr Hopkins as well as the simulated international game of ‘give-and-take’ are both consistent with what I am going to talk about here to end the Himalayas hazard blog series.  ...

Hello Everyone, Welcome to my blog about Climate Change in the Himalayas. I pinned down – Himalaya - the most spectacular and scared region in the world on the blog topic without a second thought when I got to know it would be my semester-long assignment for Global Environmental Change class as part of Master program of Climate Change in UCL. I picked up Himalayans not only because I have been fascinated by its breathtakingly beautiful landscape and incredible biodiversity, but also seeing that compared with the frequently reported and well-known glaciers retreating in the Arctic and Antarctic, the complete science report of climate change at the 3rd pole is meagre and inadequate. Although evidence suggested that Himalayan region is warming there are still scientific uncertainties and questions to be addressed and resolved to understand the complex cause, trend, implication and significance in depth. Therefore, I am intrigued to continue with my study in this blog to seek for scien...