Warming Rapidly Changing Nepali Himalayas; New Lakes, Disappearing Glaciers, Emerging Dangers

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For many tourists trekking to Mount Everest Base Camp, the trip is an adventure of a lifetime. The thin clear air, stark landscape and ice-tipped peaks pierce the inky sky providing Instagram backdrops. However, what is stunning scenery to tourists is for climate scientists an apocalyptic sight. They see dramatic evidence all around of a rapidly warming atmosphere.

Visitors returning to the Everest region after many years will notice changes in the landscape: large lakes where there were none; glacial ice replaced by ponds, boulders and sand; the snowline moving up the mountains; and glaciers that have receded and shrunk.

All these features are visible from ground level right from the start of the trek in Lukla. The banks of the Bhote Kosi, part of the river system that drains the slopes of the Himalayas in Nepal and Tibet, still bear the scars of a deadly flash flood in 1985 that washed off a long section of the Everest Trail and the hydropower plant in the village of Thame. The flood was caused by an avalanche into the Dig Tso, a glacial lake.

Further up, near the village of Tengboche, the Imja Khola bears signs of another huge glacial lake outburst flood that thundered down the western flank of Ama Dablam in 1977. And below the formidable south face of Lhotse is Imja Tso, a lake 2 kilometers long that has formed and grown in the last 30 years. It does not exist on trekking maps from the 1980s. All these lakes were formed and enlarged as a result of global warming melting the ice.

EDIT

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26112018/mount-everest-photos-world-highest-glacier-climate-change-khombu-icefall-climbing-route