Melting mountain glaciers pose a growing flood risk to some 15 million people around the world, researchers said in a report published on Tuesday, with communities in Asia facing the biggest danger.
Collectively, the world's glaciers lost about 332 gigatonnes of ice a year between 2006 and 2016. Since 1990, the number and volume of glacial lakes worldwide have each increased by about 50%.
The best-studied glacier in the Himalayas is north India's Chhota Shigri, which has 20 years of mass balance measurements - the difference between how much ice a glacier gains and loses in a year.blistering temperatures and near the end of the year, scientists headed into the Himalayas to measure Chhota Shigri's mass.
"The impacts are already visible as the glacier is thinning and retreating," said Farooq Azam, a glaciologist at the Indian Institute of Technology Indore who monitors Chhota Shigri. This will be "impactful to downstream water availability in near future", he said.
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