Report: Himalayan Glaciers on Track to Lose Up to 75% of Ice by 2100 

Water forms under Nepal's Khumbu glacier as the ice melts in this undated handout image. (Alex Treadway/ICIMOD/Handout via Reuters)
Water forms under Nepal's Khumbu glacier as the ice melts in this undated handout image. (Alex Treadway/ICIMOD/Handout via Reuters)
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Report: Himalayan Glaciers on Track to Lose Up to 75% of Ice by 2100 

Water forms under Nepal's Khumbu glacier as the ice melts in this undated handout image. (Alex Treadway/ICIMOD/Handout via Reuters)
Water forms under Nepal's Khumbu glacier as the ice melts in this undated handout image. (Alex Treadway/ICIMOD/Handout via Reuters)

Glaciers in Asia’s Hindu Kush Himalaya could lose up to 75% of their volume by century’s end due to global warming, causing both dangerous flooding and water shortages for the 240 million people who live in the mountainous region, according to a new report.

A team of international scientists has found that ice loss in the region, home to the famous peaks of Everest and K2, is speeding up. During the 2010s, the glaciers shed ice as much as 65% faster than they had in the preceding decade, according to the assessment by the Kathmandu-based International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), an intergovernmental scientific authority on the region.

“We’re losing the glaciers, and we’re losing them in 100 years’ time,” said Philippus Wester, an environmental scientist and ICIMOD fellow who was the lead author of the report.

The Hindu Kush Himalaya stretches 3,500 km (2,175 miles) across Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan.

At 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2C of warming above preindustrial temperatures, glaciers across the entire region will lose 30% to 50% of their volume by 2100, the report said.

But where glaciers will melt most depends on location. At 3C of warming — what the world is roughly on track for under current climate policies — glaciers in the Eastern Himalaya, which includes Nepal and Bhutan, will lose up to 75% of their ice. At 4C of warming, that ticks up to 80%.

The full picture

Scientists have struggled to assess how climate change is affecting the Hindu Kush Himalaya. Unlike the European Alps and North America’s Rocky Mountains, the region lacks a long historical record of field measurements that reveal whether glaciers are growing or shrinking.

“There was always some uncertainty in the Himalaya — are they really melting?”, said Wester.

In 2019, the United States declassified spy satellite images of the region’s glaciers dating back to 1970, providing a new scientific baseline.

Further advances in satellite technology in the past five years, alongside bolstered field efforts, have buoyed scientists’ understanding of the changes underway. The report draws on data running through December 2022.

“While the knowledge of the Himalayan glaciers is still not as good as the Alps, it’s now comparable to other regions like the Andes,” said Tobias Bolch, a glaciologist with Graz University of Technology in Austria unaffiliated with the report.

Compared with a 2019 ICIMOD assessment of the region, “there’s a much higher level of confidence now in these findings,” said Wester. “We have a better sense of what the loss will be through to 2100 at different levels of global warming.”

Livelihoods at risk

With this newfound understanding comes grave concern for the people living in the Hindu Kush Himalaya.

The report found water flows in the region’s 12 river basins, including the Ganges, Indus, and Mekong, are likely to peak around mid-century, with consequences for the more than 1.6 billion people who depend on this supply.

"While it may sound like we'll have more water because glaciers are melting at an increased rate ... too frequently it will arise as floods instead of a steady flow," said Wester. Past peak water, supplies will eventually dwindle.

Many high mountain communities use glacial water and snowmelt to irrigate crops. But the timing of when snow falls has become more erratic, and there’s less than there used to be.

“We’ve had ... huge numbers of yak deaths because during summer they go to higher pastures,” said report co-author Amina Maharjan, a senior specialist in livelihoods and migration at ICIMOD. If the snow falls too soon, “the entire area is covered in snow and they don’t have grass to graze”.

People are now moving away from mountain communities to earn income elsewhere, she said.

Melting glaciers also pose a danger to downstream communities. Runoff pools in shallow lakes, held back by rocks and debris. The risk comes when a lake overfills, bursting through its natural barrier and sending a torrent of water rushing down mountain valleys.

Governments are trying to prepare for these changes. China is working to shore up the country’s water supplies. And Pakistan is installing early warning systems for glacial lake outburst floods.



EU Scientists: May Was World's Second-hottest on Record

FILE PHOTO: A man sits on a tangle of branches in the Sacramento River while staying cool during a heat wave in Sacramento, California, US May 30, 2025. REUTERS/Fred Greaves/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A man sits on a tangle of branches in the Sacramento River while staying cool during a heat wave in Sacramento, California, US May 30, 2025. REUTERS/Fred Greaves/File Photo
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EU Scientists: May Was World's Second-hottest on Record

FILE PHOTO: A man sits on a tangle of branches in the Sacramento River while staying cool during a heat wave in Sacramento, California, US May 30, 2025. REUTERS/Fred Greaves/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A man sits on a tangle of branches in the Sacramento River while staying cool during a heat wave in Sacramento, California, US May 30, 2025. REUTERS/Fred Greaves/File Photo

The world experienced its second-warmest May since records began this year, a month in which climate change fueled a record-breaking heatwave in Greenland, scientists said on Wednesday.

Last month was Earth's second-warmest May on record - exceeded only by May 2024 - rounding out the northern hemisphere's second-hottest March-May spring on record, the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said in a monthly bulletin, according to Reuters.

Global surface temperatures last month averaged 1.4 degrees Celsius higher than in the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period, when humans began burning fossil fuels on an industrial scale, C3S said.

That broke a run of extraordinary heat, in which 21 of the last 22 months had an average global temperature exceeding 1.5C above pre-industrial times - although scientists warned this break was unlikely to last.

"Whilst this may offer a brief respite for the planet, we do expect the 1.5C threshold to be exceeded again in the near future due to the continued warming of the climate system," said C3S director Carlo Buontempo.

The main cause of climate change is greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. Last year was the planet's hottest on record.

A separate study, published by the World Weather Attribution group of climate scientists on Wednesday, found that human-caused climate change made a record-breaking heatwave in Iceland and Greenland last month about 3C hotter than it otherwise would have been - contributing to a huge additional melting of Greenland's ice sheet.

"Even cold-climate countries are experiencing unprecedented temperatures," said Sarah Kew, study co-author and researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute.

The global threshold of 1.5C is the limit of warming which countries vowed under the Paris climate agreement to try to prevent, to avoid the worst consequences of warming.

The world has not yet technically breached that target - which refers to an average global temperature of 1.5C over decades.

However, some scientists have said it can no longer realistically be met, and have urged governments to cut CO2 emissions faster, to limit the overshoot and the fueling of extreme weather.

C3S's records go back to 1940, and are cross-checked with global temperature records going back to 1850.