Climate Change in Himalaya

“To know your future you must know your past.” There is no better way to start the new semester with expanding the field of view on the Himalayas by looking at the paleoclimate and environment changes through time.  The Quaternary period where the transition from the Quaternary Ice Age, to Oldest Dryas, Older Dryas/Allerød and Younger Dryas and to current Holocene Interglacial, represents a distinctive period with typical climate events and environmental changes influencing earth ecosystems. The behaviours of glaciation and hydrology in Himalaya–Tibetan orogen at different regions have oscillated throughout the Quaternary  driven by different climatic forcing, in turn, could have had a major impact on global climate. It is of great importance for paleoecological research to understand the nature and dynamics of the Quaternary changes on this high land and adjacent regions. Many studies have applied the proxies records on Quaternary geological archives from  Himalaya–Tibet...

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...

Himalayan is a paradise for plant species, comprised of 39% grassland, 20% forested area, 15% of shrubland, and 5% agricultural land . The vegetation can be broadly grouped into four altitudinal types— tropical, subtropical, temperate, and alpine . Apart from elevation, the plant communities is also affected by climatic factors such as changes in temperature, precipitation, snow cover, wind and sun exposure. Meanwhile  anthropocentric influence  is driving vegetation dynamics to a change owing to urbanisation, deforestation, land-use change and hydropower development. Although facing the challenge of Himalayan topographical complexity and harsh environment, advanced methods such as satellite remote sensing and  Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)   have been developped and utilised  for high-quality mapping and data analysis. Numerous institutions also endeavour to make progress with government and local community on plant life conservation and vulner...

Source: JULIE LARSEN MAHER @WCS Hi there, I know you rarely see me this close, I am a medium-sized cat but not that kind of cat you often see in nature, instead I am solitary by very high altitude and one of the most elusive and vulnerable top predators of the world. My kingdom can be found in mountainous regions from Central Asia of Russia, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan to Hindu-Kush-Himalayan regions through Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal and China. Life in these harshest environments is not easy, but I am very well evolved and superbly adapted to survive. Thanks to my woolly and dense hairs I can ward off the severe cold and easily walk on ice and snow with my large fur-covered snowshoes . I've also got enlarged nasal cavity and muscular chest to get sufficient oxygen at high altitudes, my powerful legs and long tail (as long as my body) help me to spring up to 50 feet high with a good balance , and move around my rugged kingdom without any problem. ...

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.  ...

In this post, let's continue to look at the existing and emerging methods to model the stage of a GLOF,  the reason why the advanced models are so far rarely seen in glacial hazard literature , and what are the main challenge for the modellers and research groups to achieve their expected goal of hazard assessment and prediction. Picture: Rumbak Valley in the catchment of Hemis National Park of  Himalayas, Rumbak is one of the numerous villages in the  Ladakh  Range   region of north-west India.  Credit:  Zhu Jing (writer), travelling in 2014 Review of available methods  Westoby et al., 2014  very well summarises and presents a number of approaches to model different stage or episode of a GLOF, which can be categorised as A Trigger Mechanism  A Dam Breach  An outburst downstream passage The simulation of a dam breach initiation and development largely rely on the empirical or analytical formulation ...

In past century, the natural hazard in the form of floods has become the most dominant disaster in the Himalayan region in terms of the frequency and scale of the damage that has been done. For examples, in  Bangladesh flood of 1998 , about 1000 people perished, 700,000 hectares of agricultural lands were wiped, more than a million people lost their home. According to  Asia Development Bank and World Bank 2010 : '' the direct damage caused by the floods was estimated to be US$6.5 billion, with an additional US$3.6 billion in indirect losses''.  Image: S. Bajracharya, ICIMOD, Nepal. Source:  State of Himalayan glaciers less alarming than feared  (http://www.media.uzh.ch/en/Press-Releases/archive/2012/teilentwarnung-fuer-himalaya-gletscher.html) Let’s first look at the nature of two relatively prevalent hazards in the Himalayas:  Monsoon Floods and Outburst Floods Monsoon Floods , as the name explains, are floods from the changes in monsoon r...

The topic of this week Global Environmental Change Seminar is GeoEngineering - known as ‘plan B’ - to counteract or mitigate the effects of climate change particularly driven by greenhouse gases. From Crutzen, P.J.paper 2006 to present, there has been a surge of attention to it along with debates.  Such an intentional intervention to ‘engineer’ the planet has two categories broadly referred as carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM) .  With good intention to address the climate challenges, the geoengineering proposals are largely theoretical and lack of scientific modelling and empirical research. The most difficult obstacle is the  governance,  legal and management  uncertainties .  The future climate projects leave us with a number of questions and an indeterminate picture of everything we would do to respond to what have done to the planet. The U.N. defines “dangerous anthropogenic interference” as  inadvertent climate...