Climate change – where the ice is fastest melts

The “eternal ice cream” is not only available in the polar regions – but also in the high mountains. But at least in its once impressive expansion, the glacier ice is hardly to be classified there as ages. The declines are serious and take place faster and faster. This can also be felt on the south flank of the Himalayas. There is the drainage over a number of large currents that surround the Tibetan high plateau- the Tibetan high plateau surrounding the Tibetan high plateau- the drainage over a number of large currents, which are essential for the water supply to the Indian subcontinent. The two billion people are affected there.

“About 68.7 percent of the world sweet water reserves are preserved in the glaciers and ice caps.”

Manish Mehta Glaziologist

On a global scale, the glaciers between 2000 and 2023 lost an impressive 6.542 billion tons to mass, according to the United Nations World Water Development Report 2025, which was presented on March 21st, the first World Glecy Day. “This corresponds to an ice block from Germany with a thickness of 25 meters,” explained Michael Zemp, director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) based in Switzerland.

Nowhere beyond Arctic and Antarctic are there as large ice masses as in the Hindukusch-Himalaja region that tense from Afghanistan and Pakistan to India, Nepal and Bhutan to Bangladesh, Myanmar and distinctive parts of China. The loss of glaciers immediately increases the risk of fall floods and landslides. In the long term, there is a risk of water shortages: “Millions of people, especially in agricultural communities, will struggle to continue to be continued to get clean water,” warned Zemp.

In an interview with the newspaper “The New Indian Express”, Manish Mehta, a renowned glaziologist at the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology in Dehradun, also drawn attention to the seriousness of the situation: »It is a fact that about 68.7 percent of the world sweet water reserves in the glaciers and ice caps are preserved. (…) Melting the glaciers not only increases the sea level, but also threatens the water supply in areas that depend on these ice reserves. «

It is not just the increase in the average temperature that accelerates melting the glaciers. They have less and less time to recover in Himalayas, especially recent studies. The particularly dry and warm winter 2024/25 has significantly increased the snow limits in the Nepalese mountains. This was particularly clear on the admission of a NASA satellite on January 20-around Mount Everest, for example with Khumbu and Rongbuk glaciers, there are large snow-free areas that were still covered in a comparison image of January 28, 2022.

In fact, the last year in 2022 has recently been the last year, in which the snow limits were at average, the glaciologist Mauri Pelto from Nichols College calculated in a comprehensive evaluation of such satellite images and local weather data. In the years 2021, 2023, 2024 and now 2025, the snow line climbed. On January 28, it was at 6100 meters, 150 meters higher than on December 11, 2024, is quoted from the study results on the NASA portal »Earth Observatory«. The reason for the decline in winter is not the melt, but sublimation – i.e. the direct transition from solid snow to water vapor.

But even after the summer monsoon, when the Himalaya glaciers are most likely to have the chance to convert snow into new ice mass, it is warmer than before. The resulting water shortages threatens arable farmers as well as cattle breeders, whose animals find less and less fresh green, it is said. Only 28 of the approximately 50,000 glaciers in the Himalayas are under constant scientific observation, according to the “New Indian Express”. In preparation for the international conference on glacier protection at the end of May in Tajikistan, a summary of several studies referred to the fact that two thirds of the glaciers in the region should have disappeared by the end of the century. Forecasts of a third of all glaciers worldwide are based.

India has 9575 glaciers, Raj Bhushan Choudhary, Minister of State in the Ministry of Water, recalled in parliament on March 20. Almost all of them lose mass in worrying. During the drying times, the large rivers such as indus, ganges and Brahmaputra have far fewer meltwater available. One of the most threatening examples of the greatly increased speed is the Gangotri glacier, reported the “Deccan Chronicle”. A study had calculated its melting with an average of 18.8 meters a year between 1935 and 1996. According to the latest knowledge, the loss in 2022 was now 34 meters. The Ganges feeds 70 percent of melting water – one of two main sources is the gangotri.

Devastating glacier lake outbreaks (English abbreviation: GLOF) could occur more often. In 2021, a GLOF had destroyed a hydropower plant under construction from a lake fed by the Nandadevi glacier in the state of Uttarakhand and killed 150 workers. There were 58 fatalities, 74 missing and immense damage to property when South Lhonak Lake broke through the glacier of the same name in Sikkim on the evening of October 3, 2023. A mixture of 50 million cubic meters of seawater and 270 million cubic meters of sediments poured out as a devastating sludge avalanche on the tea river down, a science team subsequently calculated and in the follow-up and in January in the journal »Science« published. In 2022 to 2024, the three -year period with the highest glacier losses is so far, according to Celeste Paulo, General Secretary of the World Organization for Meteorology (WMO), at the World Glacier Day. It is about a “question of survival,” she warned.