The Melt - Asia Society

The Asia Society's "China Green" project has a new video out on their website called "The Melt" that gives a very quick, but important overview on how the glaciers in the Himalayas are changing, and the impacts that are being felt by the people who live in that area.

The video is clearly of very high production quality, and relies not only on interviews of western researchers, as sometimes happen in these sort of productions, but they also sent a film crew to Tibet to chronicle the changes in glaciers.

Source: Asia Society

I've written about this on our blog several times.  Its important to remember that, although the IPCC report was wrong to say that all the glaciers may be gone by 2035, they are melting - at an increasing pace.

Some quick quotes from the video: "It's mostly about water"  "If this keeps going, people and animals will no longer be able to get enough water".  The focus on water as the first, and most important impact of climate change on human society tracks exactly with the findings of the IISS.

Videos and projects like this are extremely important, because they are not only aimed at western audiences.  By traveling over to China and interviewing people in Tibet, videos like this can raise awareness within China too about the impacts of climate change. As the two largest emitters of carbon, the US and China are the key players in acting to reduce their emissions - and nations act only when it is in their interest to act.  This video makes it clear that China, and Tibet, are already paying the costs for climate change.

I tried to have the video embedded here, but they have not released the code.  Head over to their website, and  watch the whole 10 minute video.  It is well worth your time.

Floods Amplified by Military Activity in the Siachen Glacier?

On Thursday, September 23 at a Congressional briefing of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, about 'Extreme Weather in a Warming World' the Pakistani Ambassador to the US, Husain Haqqani, blamed the extensive floods in Pakistan partly on military activity on the Siachen Glacier on the disputed border between Indian and Pakistan in Kashmir.  He said that "Human Activity in the glaciers" is partly to blame for climate changes that brought on the devastating floods in Pakistan this summer.  He noted that the Siachen glacier, in particular, is host to a heavy presence of both the Pakistani and Indian militaries, although he noted that Pakistan has proposed to demilitarize the area.  The Times of India called this 'an unusual remark'.

The Siachen Glacier is the world's largest non-polar glacier.  It is 43 miles long, and covers about 270 square miles (including its tributaries).  Its heights are occupied by India, but it is claimed by Pakistan to be in their area of Kashmir.

The Siachen glacier has been at the heart of the long-running Kashmir border conflict between these two rivals.  There was an excellent story from four years ago in Time Magazine, "War at the Top of the World" that detailed the conflict.

NASA's Satellite View of the Siachen Glacier

There is no question that the glacier is heavily militarized.  It is home to the world's highest helipad, and both sides have brought troops.  I confess that I haven't seen any scientific studies linking local human activity to changes on the glaciers.  However, it would be logical that any local soot (black carbon) emissions could cause significant local melting.  As I mentioned in my post about cookstoves, black carbon can cause melting on glaciers because its dark color warms the glacier in the sun, increasing its melting.

This is certainly an area that merits further study, and if these environmental concerns can help bring about a demilitarization of the volatile border, then some good could come out of this.  On the other hand, I do wonder whether this was simply another example of a Pakistani officials going out of their way to antagonize India over Kashmir, as they have been threatening war over water.

A Climate Threat: Icebergs?

NASA has some of the most dramatic pictures of melting in the Antarctic that I've seen.  This series of pictures, reproduced below from NASA’s Aqua satellite, shows the progression over 20 days from February 7 until February 27 of the collision of an iceberg, called B-9B, with the Mertz Glacier Tongue.  Apparently this glacier had been stable and immobile for the last 18 years.  Melting this year, however, has caused it to begin to move.  Below we see the consequences, as the 1400 square mile B-9B runs into the Mertz Glacier and creates an 1150 square mile iceberg.  Put together, at 2550 square miles, these icebergs are about the size of Sri Lanka. 

Here, on February 7, we see B-9B (on the right) colliding with the Mertz glacier.  Note the beginning of a crack on the left side. 

 Here, on February 20, we see that the crack has fully broken the new iceberg away from the Mertz Glacier.

 

Finally, on February 26, we see that the two glaciers have begun to float freely. 

Joe Romm put a post up on ClimateProgess by Nick Sundt of WWF detailing the iceberg collision.  Sundt focuses on the implications of this for Antarctic wildlife, particularly Emperor Penguins.  This is an important question, but is not really relevant to security practitioners. 

The reason I'm interested in icebergs is for the security of shipping.  Though you can never attribute a single event like this to climate change, we should expect that events like this will become more frequent as the world warms and ice melts.  Therefore, we could have a seemingly paradoxical effect that global warming will cause more glaciers as the ice melts.  As you can see in the image of global sea-lanes below (from Science Magazine), glaciers in the Southern Ocean are not a great threat to shipping.  The Southern Ocean will remain some of the most treacherous waters on the planet, and we shouldn't expect shipping to go here, no matter how warm the world becomes.

However, a glance at the map will show how busy the North Atlantic Route is for shipping.  Greenland is melting much faster than the IPCC predicted only 4 years ago.  Though we may not see glaciers the size of Sri Lanka coming off Greenland, we should expect that some of that rapid melt will cause icebergs to break off Greenland.  Approximately 10-15,000 glacier are created each year off Greenland, but the majority of those melt prior to threatening shipping.  The US and Canada Coast Guard run the International Ice Patrol to monitor these icebergs and prevent them from threatening shipping.  However, should more and larger icebergs become normal, then we could expect them have a tougher job, requiring greater resources, and ultimately increasing the cost of shipping.   I'm not sure how much of a threat this is, but it seems likely to be growing.