As a result of major weather events causing floods in numerous areas of Pakistan, over 1000 people have died, countless others have been forced to flee their homes, and the government is in disarray.
Floods are a result of more than just the country’s unusual weather; the situation has gotten worse as a result of the Himalayan glaciers melting.
Due to the harsh summer and heatwaves earlier this year, researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Indore have observed unprecedented melting in the Himalayan glaciers.
For more than 15 years, they have monitored the amount of snow cover, ice forms, and discharge during seasonal snowmelt.
‘We had installed it in June and by August we couldn’t even find the remnants. We had an intense heat wave in early summer when temperatures in March and April broke 100-year records. And we have had resulting glacial melt. Our team was on a glacier last week and we have seen record-breaking melt in the Himalayas,’ Mohammad Farooq Azam, a glaciologist at IIT Indore told in an interview.
A severe event known as glacial lake outburst floods occurred as a result of the excessive heat speeding up the long-term glacier melting while additional rainfall in Pakistan swollen the rivers.
Even if the Himalayan glacier melt has been accelerating, it is not an isolated occurrence. The Alps in Europe have also recorded comparable occurrences. The Himalayas’ largest frozen freshwater reservoir outside of the north and south poles is a cause for concern.
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