Jeff La Frenierre, a graduate student at Ohio State University, is studying Ecuador's Chimborazo glacier, which forms the headwaters of three different watershed systems, serving as a water source for thousands of people. About 35 percent of the glacier coverage has disappeared since the 1970s.
La Frenierre first came to Ecuador as part of Engineers Without Borders to help build a water system, and soon started to ask what changes in the mountain's glacier coverage would mean for the irrigation and drinking needs of the 200,000 people living downstream. Working with Mark and analyzing water streams, he said, is upending many of his assumptions.
Doomsday descriptions don't fit
"The easy hypothesis is that it's going to be a disaster here. I don't know if that's the case," La Frenierre said. He agreed that overstatements about the impacts are rampant in the Himalayas as well, saying, "The idea that 1.4 billion people are going to be without water when the glaciers melt is just not the case. It's a local problem; it's a local question. There are places that are going to be more impacted than other places."
Those aren't messages that environmental activists will likely find easy to hear. Armstrong recalled giving a presentation in Kathmandu on his early findings to a less-than-appreciative audience.
"I didn't agree with the doomsday predictions, and I didn't have anything that was anywhere near spectacular," Armstrong said. But, he added, "At the same time, it's just basic Earth science, and we want to do a better job than we have been."
The more modest numbers, they and other scientists stressed, don't mean that glacier melt is unimportant to river basins. Rather, they said, they mean that the understanding of water systems throughout the Himalayan region must improve and water management decisions will need to be made at very local levels.
"We need to know at least where the water comes from," Armstrong said. "How can we project into the future if we don't know where the water comes from now?"
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
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9 Comments
Add CommentThe information on sources of water is important and reassuring. One wants to know, however, what the "big picture" is for water, locally, here and there in the world. Glacier melt probably has little to do with the extinction of aquifers, for instance, especially extinctions which have already happened (Texas) or are happening (various). A water-supply map of the world, showing sources as percents (aquifer, rainfall, snowfall, glacier-melt, man-made-transfers) would be helpful to policymakers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The answers could turn the conventional wisdom about glacier melt on its head." meaning that river water contributes to glaciers instead of glaciers contributing to river water? Huh, learn something new every day.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is all well and good for a particular snapshot of the system. But what happens during droughts and how does the contribution vary seasonally? My hypothesis would be that the role of glaciers is not so much in their day to day contribution but rather stabilizing the flow. So during periods of drought the glaciers would contribute a much higher percentage which may mitigate more extreme drought conditions in the watershed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA couple of billion more people, increased food production through irrigation, increasing contamination of groundwater and increased potential for drought conditions may make any future decrease in glacial contributions to potable water supplies relatively insignificant.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRobert Schmidt may wish to reflect on the coupling of river surface evaporation and distance traveled- the farther the glacial water component moves, the less of it remains.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYo Poker Player,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAllow me to introduce you this thing called science. One of the great definitions of science is an error correction method. I like that. What you perceive as a weakness is a strength.
Now if only we could get Anthony Watts to admit to his errors...
pokerplyer: please help me get up to speed: on which side of the decimal point are these errors occuring?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPoker Player Says: I could point out a number of errors by the IPCC that SA has not chosen to discuss scientifically.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh, please do. Just be sure you are careful not repeat lies and out of context quotes. You know like the Sunday Times having to retract the utterly bogus story about the Amazon rainforest. I would normally just point you to the retraction on the paper itself but apparently it has disappeared. But you know the Internet does not forget. Here is a scan of the apology.
http://www.realclimate.org/docs/ST_Correction_img007%5B1%5D.jpg
How about the Sunday Times being forced to issue a retraction for blatantly lying about the head of the IPCC?
Here is the Sunday Times retraction, it is still there:
Dr. Pachuri Retraction
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/7957631/Dr-Pachauri-Apology.html
But I am sure you are not just going to repeat easily debunked information that only a credulous ideologue swallows without a hint of skepticism. Am I right?
Pokerplayer: How about an article on the ability of GCMs to accurately predict actual conditions. Or maybe one on the design criteria for the current GCMs.
Trent Says: Happy to oblige:
Comparing Global Temperature Predictions
http://www.skepticalscience.com/comparing-global-temperature-predictions.html
I do hope you are not going to object to the article you requested simply because it is on Skeptical Science. That would be, uh, let me think here... Oh yes, an ad Hominem.
But do go on. I am sure you want to talk about Himalayan Glaciers and the typo in a subsection of a 3,000 page document and how such mistakes discredit the other 2,999 pages.
For much of the western US it is snow melt and not glaciers which is more critical. Of course if one has a somewhat empty dam or two, as on the Colorado, water can be stored at anytime.
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