Fly in a jet over
Mount Everest,
and you will soar
over a sea of
jagged white peaks
stretching endlessly
to the horizon.
depending on the rate of global warming, one-
third to two-thirds of the region’s approximately
56,000 glaciers will disappear by 2100.
This is a dire prediction for some 1.9 billion
South Asians, who rely on the glaciers for water
—used not only for drinking and sanitation but
also for agriculture, hydroelectric power, and
tourism. But the survey also looked at a more
immediate question: As the glaciers rapidly
melt, where will all the water—more than a
quadrillion gallons of it, roughly the amount
contained in Lake Huron—go?
The answer is that the Himalaya, long defined
by its glaciers, is rapidly becoming a mountain
range defined by lakes. In fact, another study
found that from 1990 to 2010, more than 900 new
glacier-fed lakes were formed across Asia’s high
mountain ranges. Because of the remote loca-
tions, scientists must rely on satellites to count
them, and new lakes appear to be growing soThis article was supported by Rolex, which is part-
nering with the National Geographic Society on
the Perpetual Planet initiative, a series of science
expeditions to explore, study, and document
change in the planet’s unique regions.It’s a landscape like no other on the planet—
the colossal glaciers of the Himalaya, which
for millennia have been replenished by mon-
soons that smother the mountains in new snow
each summer.
But take that same jet trip 80 years from now,
and those gleaming ice giants could be gone.
Earlier this year, the International Centre for
Integrated Mountain Development published
the most comprehensive analysis to date of how
climate change will affect the glaciers of the
Himalaya, Hindu Kush, Karakoram, and Pamir
mountains, which together form an arc across
Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, India, Nepal,
Bhutan, and Myanmar. The study warned that,136 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC