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They share the same "fate" as the north and south poles.
Glaciers are particularly interested in the Tibetan Plateau and surrounding areas, home to the Hindu Kush-Himalayan ice sheet, because it has the third-largest ice cover in the world—after Antarctica and the Arctic. China alone accounts for 14.5% of global ice. However, a quarter of that ice has disappeared since 1970.
Last September, in a special report on the cryosphere by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), scientists warned that up to two-thirds of the remaining glaciers in the Tibetan Plateau region will disappear by the end of the 21st century. It is projected that one-third of the ice on these glaciers will completely melt by the same time, even if the internationally agreed-upon target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels is met.
Map of Earth's "third pole" along with associated mountain ranges and major rivers.
Scientists used satellites to measure the rate of ice loss in the region and found that the ice at the "third pole" is melting at a dizzying rate, twice as fast as it did between 1975 and 2000.
The reason for the rapid melting of ice here is that the Tibetan Plateau, like the other two poles of the Earth, is warming at a rate three times faster than the global average: 0.3°C per decade. In this case, the high altitude of the “third pole” allows it to absorb energy from the rising temperature and humid air more quickly than normal. Winter snowfall has decreased significantly, with an average of about 4 less cold nights and 7 warmer nights per year compared to 40 years ago.
directly affects people's lives.
Unlike the ice at the poles, the fate of the ice here directly affects the lives of many people. The Tibetan Plateau and surrounding mountains are known as the water tower of Asia, as they are the source of the continent's 10 largest rivers (including the Mekong). The lives of approximately 1.6 billion people from 12 countries living in the river basins have been and continue to be directly affected.
The lives of approximately 1.6 billion people in the basins of these rivers have been and continue to be directly affected.
The melting of glaciers here has even more serious consequences in terms of injury and death than in the sparsely populated North and South Poles: melting ice leads to glacial lake explosions and landslides, and villages are frequently swept away despite significantly improved monitoring and rescue systems. Satellite data shows that the number and severity of these glacial lakes are steadily increasing in the region.
The dissolution of freshwater sources and their release into the ocean are causing sea levels to rise, creating difficulties for the lives of people in the bays and deltas of Southeast Asia, from Bangladesh to Vietnam.
Furthermore, this phenomenon is releasing dangerous pollutants. Glaciers are the shells of time, accumulating snowflakes over hundreds of thousands of years, and as the glaciers melt, they release these condensed air components back into free circulation. Dangerous pesticides like DDT (which was used for three decades before being banned in 1972) and perfluoroalkyl acids are now being carried away by the melting ice, silently accumulating in sediments and in the food chain.
The vast highlands at the “third pole” are one of the most ecologically diverse yet also most vulnerable regions on Earth. The future of this immense natural area, its people, its vast ice sheets, and its very lifeline, all depend on us to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants.
