Deadly disaster in Nepal exposes Himalayan risk that India just doesn’t see | Today’s news

The wider cryosphere is changing in ways that may change this risk. Tariq Abdullah, a geoinformatics researcher based in Kashmir, analyzed 12,243 glaciers in the Upper Indus basin – which includes India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and China – using satellite-derived elevation data. Between 2000 and 2012, the glaciers thinned about 0.35 meters per year, representing an estimated cumulative mass loss of about 70 gigatons, or 700 billion tons of ice.