It's a scary thought, but scientists say the 40 percent of humanity living in South Asia and China could well be living with little drinking water within 50 years as global warming melts Himalayan glaciers, the region's main water source.
The glaciers supply 303.6 million cubic feet every year to Asian rivers, including the Yangtze and Yellow rivers in China, the Ganga in India, the Indus in Pakistan, the Brahmaputra in Bangladesh and Burma's Irrawaddy.
But as global warming increases, the glaciers have been rapidly retreating, with average temperatures in the Himalayas up 1 degree Celsius since the 1970s.
A World Wide Fund report published in March said a quarter of the world's glaciers could disappear by 2050 and half by 2100.
"If the current scenario continues, there will be very little water left in the Ganga and its tributaries," Prakash Rao, climate change and energy program coordinator with the fund in India told Reuters.
"The situation here is more critical because here they depend on glaciers for drinking water while in other areas there are other sources of drinking water, not just glacial."
Experts are alarmed.
About 67 percent of the nearly 12,124 square miles of Himalayan glaciers are receding and in the long run as the ice diminishes, glacial runoffs in summer and river flows will also go down, leading to severe water shortages in the region.
We seem to have passed the point of no return as earth dwellers. And the powers that be are still in denial.
Hi, Ellie. I am just getting caught up on the blogs after being away from the computer for three days.
ReplyDeleteThere is a long article in Sunday's Tulsa world about the melting of glaciers in Greenland.
Marilyn