Experts warn glaciers in Indian Kashmir melting at alarming rate due to climate change

October 12th, 2009 SRINAGAR - A three-day conference pertaining to effects of global warming on melting glaciers in the Himalayan region of Jammu and Kashmir commenced in Srinagar on Monday. The conference is being attended by numerous ecological experts from various parts of the world, who are worried about the rate at which surface air temperatures in the country are rising, which is having a severe affect on the glaciers.

October 5th, 2009 LONDON - In a new research, scientists in India and China have determined that glaciers in the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau that feed the river systems of almost half the world's people are melting faster because of the effects of clouds of soot from diesel fumes and wood fires. According to a report in the Guardian, the results of the research, to be announced this month in Kashmir, show for the first time that clouds of soot - made up of tiny particles of "black carbon" emitted from old diesel engines and from cooking with wood, crop waste or cow dung - are "unequivocally having an impact on glacial melting" in the Himalayas.

September 22nd, 2009 LONDON - Lewis Gordon Pugh, a British swimmer nicknamed "the human polar bear", is planning to become the first man to swim in a lake on Mount Everest, to highlight the effects of climate change in the Himalayas. According to a report by Sky News, Pugh will take a dip in the waters of a lake on the Khumbu Glacier, 17,000ft above sea level, in April 2010.

September 6th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Reports indicate that most glaciers in Washington and Alaska in the US are dramatically shrinking in response to a warming climate. During the past 50 years, USGS (US Geological Survey) scientists have measured changes in the mass (length and thickness) of three glaciers: Alaska's Gulkana and Wolverine Glaciers and Washington's South Cascade Glacier.

September 6th, 2009 NEW DELHI - A warmer world that threatens to change the battlefield and impact the capability of the military on land, sea and air is the new adversary of the Indian armed forces which are worried that the seriousness of the issue is yet to register at the government level. "While global warming will have common effect of more pressure on the logistics and increased wear and tear of weapons, it will also have force-specific impact.

September 3rd, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new study has found that large-scale farming projects by humans can erode the Earth's surface at rates comparable to those of the world's largest rivers and glaciers. The research offers stark evidence of how humans are reshaping the planet.

September 1st, 2009 WASHINGTON - A long-term study of key glaciers in western North America has shown that glacial shrinkage is rapid and accelerating, and that it is a result of climate change. William Shilts, a geologist at the University of Illinois, spent nearly two decades studying glaciers on Bylot Island, an uninhabited island about 300 miles southwest of Thule, Greenland.

August 14th, 2009 LONDON - A new research has determined that one of the largest glaciers in Antarctica is thinning four times faster than it was 10 years ago. Professor Duncan Wingham of University College London (UCL) led the research team.

July 14th, 2009 NEW DELHI - Soot from the wood-based cooking fires used by 70 percent of Indians is forming a cloud of pollutants that is impeding the monsoon winds, according to a senior scientist. The Asian Brown Cloud, as the blanket of pollutants over South Asia and the Tibetan plateau is called, is not only weakening the monsoon but is responsible for half the warming observed in the Himalayas, Syed Iqbal Hasnain, senior fellow at The Energy and Resources Institute, said here Monday evening.

June 27th, 2009 MHOW - Climate change poses threats to India beyond the sphere of environment as passages opened up by the melting snows in the northern Himalayas could be used by terrorists to infiltrate into the country, eminent environmentalist R.K. Pachauri said here Saturday.

June 24th, 2009 LONDON - Scientists in Nepal have embarked on the first field studies of Himalayan glacial lakes, some of which are feared to be swelling dangerously due to global warming. In May, they completed the field visit to the first location, a lake in the Everest region, in a series of studies.

June 23rd, 2009 WASHINGTON - In times when most glaciers in the world are shrinking due to global warming, two mysterious South American glaciers are displaying strange behavior in the sense that they are growing. "Most of the 50 massive glaciers draped over the spine of the Patagonian Andes are shrinking in response to a global warming," said Andres Rivera, a glaciologist at the Center for Scientific Studies in Valdivia, Chile.

June 4th, 2009 NEW DELHI - Northwestern Himalayas has become 1.4 degrees Celsius warmer in the last 100 years, a far higher level of warming than the 0.5-1.1 degrees for the rest of the globe, Indian scientists have found. Scientists from the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Pune University's Department of Geology examined the variation in precipitation (snowfall and rainfall) in the region and found that warming has led to a delay in the onset of winter and a reduction in snowfall.

April 28th, 2009 Al Gore calls for prompt action on melting iceOSLO — Al Gore said Tuesday the world must act quickly to slow the melting of the world's polar ice packs and glaciers before it reaches a critical rate for global warming. "We have to act and we have to act quickly because we don't want to cross this tipping point," the Nobel peace laureate and former U.S.

March 30th, 2009 SRINAGAR - Kashmir is experiencing the effects of global warming, with high altitude glaciers retreating at an unprecedented rate, thus threatening the eco-system of the valley. Owing to global warming, most of the small glaciers in Kashmir have melted totally, while the larger ones have decreased in size.