Siachen Glacier (IN/PK) Length Cut In Half In 15 Years - From 150Km To 74 Km - Hindustani Times

[hatrack]

The world’s highest battlefield has vanished by half, but not quite the way peaceniks would want it. Geological field evidence has established for the first time that the original length of the 19,000-feet high Siachen Glacier, in what is currently Indian territory, was 150 kilometres, an Indian researcher said. It is now down to 74 kilometres.

That melting process could touch the lives of millions across Pakistan, where much of the lifeline Indus River is fed by waters from the Nubra and Shyok rivers that originate from the Siachen and a tributary glacier called Rimo. Melting of glaciers — slow-moving rivers of ice — can cause flooding, landslides and lakes that can burst, like Tibet’s Parchu Lake in June 2005.

“There is now evidence that global warming has caused the Siachen Glacier to recede by at least 76 kilometre — and this doesn’t include its other tongues and territory in Pakistan,” Dr. Rajeev Upadhay, of the geology department at Nainital’s Kumaun University, told Hindustan Times.

Upadhyay, whose paper on his findings appeared last week in the journal Current Science, has studied the glacier since 1995.

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