Dramatic impact of climate change at Everest: Greenpeace

New Delhi, May 30 (UNI) Greenpeace today released findings from three expeditions to Mt Everest and its surrounding region on the Tibetan Plateau that show a dramatic level of glacier retreat due to global warming.

In the past three years, Greenpeace China had undertaken two expeditions to Mt Everest and one expedition to the source of the Yellow River, on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.

Greenpeace India undertook an expedition to the snout of the Gangotri Glacier in 2006.

Greenpeace campaigner Li Yan explained what the expedition team saw on their latest trip to Mt Everest, ''a big piece of the Rongbuk Glacier, the major glacier on the Northern slope of Mt Everest, has disappeared, compared to a photo taken four decades ago.'' ''This is a serious warning. We must act immediately or most of the glaciers will disappear in the next few decades.'' Glaciers on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau were source of major rivers in Asia, including Ganga, Indus, Yangtze, Yellow River and Mekong.

To prevent the worst water shortage crisis, Greenpeace urged the governments of China, India and other countries to take immediate measures to reduce carbon emissions.

Greenpeace India Climate and Energy Campaigner K Srinivas said we witnessed a dramatic Gangotri glacier retreat at the snout of the glacier that feeds Ganga at Gaumukh when his team undertook an expedition to glacier in September 2006.

''The priest of the Gangotri temple who we spoke to recalled his grandfather having narrated that that same snout used to be at a place called Bhojwasa, a good seven km from where the snout is currently located.'' The glacier was retreating at the alarming rate of 34 m per year, and this would severely impact the water availability in the rivers of North India,'' he said.

The latest Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change report predicted that if the current trend of glacier retreat continued, 80 per cent of Himalayan glaciers would be gone in less than 30 years.

China already faced severe water crisis due to its population size and toxic pollution.

In India, the Ganga on which over 500 million Indians depend was under threat of drying up due to the shrinking glaciers.

The IPCC report also warned that glacier retreat would threaten fresh water supply for one-sixth of the world's population if global warming continued at current trend.

Greenpeace urged governments around the world to take actions to tackle climate change. In April, Greenpeace launched 'Energy Revolution: A Sustainable Energy Outlook', in India and China, which outlined how both of these burgeoning economies could maintain economic development while stabilising its carbon emissions by improving energy efficiency and developing renewable energies.

''We need to curb carbon emissions immediately, because the consequences of inactions will be too big and too far-reaching,'' Srinivas added.

UNI