Western Himalaya Warming Faster Than Central, Eastern Stretches: Study
The study also revealed that across the Himalaya, more snow is lost in spring than in winter, and by far the most is lost in the west.
New Delhi: The western Himalaya, spanning across Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh, is warming faster than the central and eastern stretches of the range, according to a new study. It added that winter is warming faster than spring, and night-time temperatures are climbing faster than daytime highs over the western Himalaya.
The study, 'Vulnerability of the Himalayan region under the climate change', was published in the Journal of Earth System Science and made public on Monday.
It was led by the Department of Remote Sensing and Geoinformatics, Birla Institute of Technology (BIT), Ranchi, with the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, and Ashoka University.
The authors of the analysis used two kinds of evidence. The first is a 120-year record of actual temperature measurements across the region, running from 1901 to 2020.
The second is a set of eight global climate models, first checked against what has already happened and then run forward to 2,100 under five possible futures -- from a world that cuts emissions sharply to one that keeps burning fossil fuels at the current pace
The study also revealed that across the Himalaya, more snow is lost in spring than in winter, and by far the most is lost in the west.
It highlighted that springtime snow loss over the western Himalaya could be three times larger on a high-emission pathway than on a low-emission one by the end of the century.
BIT's Protyusha Mukhopadhyay, the study's lead author, said, "The Himalaya is often discussed as a single system, but our observations and models both say otherwise."
"The western Himalaya consistently emerges as the most sensitive stretch - it warms the most and loses the most snow under every pathway we tested. That has direct consequences for the states that sit in it," Mukhopadhyay added.