The terminus of Parlung No.4 glacier, during a rainy day in June 2022. Photo: Chuanxi Zhao
The terminus of Parlung No.4 glacier, during a rainy day in June 2022. Photo: Chuanxi Zhao - Millions of people depend on water from the glaciers of High-Mountain Asia. South-eastern Tibet, however, has some of the most rapidly melting glaciers in Asia. This is due to less summer snowfall, as a study led by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL shows. Unlike in the Alps, glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau receive most of their snowfall during the summer months, which are the wettest but also the warmest. The glaciers in the south-eastern Tibetan Plateau feed the Brahmaputra River, on which millions of people downstream rely for domestic, agricultural, and industrial uses. Earth-observation satellites have recently revealed that glaciers in this region are experiencing some of the highest mass loss rates within Asia, and this loss is accelerating in the last decades.
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