A paper about the accelerated glacier melting and decrease in mountain snowpack in the Himalayas potentially affecting over one billion people has been published by the journal Science.
The paper, Glaciohydrology of the Himalaya-Karakoram, was co-authored by UNBC’s Geography Assistant Professor Dr. Joseph Shea.
“Well, it’s a pretty hot topic if you’ll excuse the pun. They (glaciers) are definitely features that a very interesting for a bunch of reasons. One is that they are very obvious indicators of climate change. They respond very visibly to changes in their climate. But also, as we’ve identified the water resource issues, glaciers can be really important parts of the water supply.” said Dr. Shea.
He mentioned that climate change will affect different regions in different ways and that he suspected something like the Fraser river isn’t as reliant on glaciers, but snowpack is something worth watching in our region.
“If we start getting warmer winters with more rainfall instead of snow, people like to joke what’s wrong with a little bit of global warming, but the problem is when it comes as rain in the winter it’s just going to go down the river. And so it’s not going to be there in the summer to maintain these flows that we get.”