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KATHMANDU, 8 Feb:<\/strong> Researchers in Nepal on Tuesday warned that the highest glacier on the top of Mount Everest could disappear by the middle of this century as the 2,000-year-old ice cap on the world’s tallest mountain is thinning at an alarming rate.<\/p>\n The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) here said that the Everest has been losing ice significantly since the late 1990s, citing a latest research report issued here.<\/p>\n The Everest Expedition, the single most comprehensive scientific expedition to the Everest, conducted trailblazing research on glaciers and the alpine environment, the ICIMOD said.<\/p>\n A recent article published in the Nature Portfolio journal reported that the ice on the Everest has been thinning at an alarming rate.<\/p>\n The multidisciplinary team comprised scientists from eight countries, including 17 from Nepal. Three of the co-authors of the study were affiliated with the ICIMOD.<\/p>\n It has been estimated that the ice in the South Cole glacier, located at an elevation of 8,020 metres, is thinning at a rate of nearly two-mitre per year, the report said.<\/p>\n The findings were based on data from a 10-metre-long ice core obtained from South Col glacier (in the Nepalese side of the Everest) at an elevation of 8,020 metre and meteorological observations<\/p>\n \u00a0from the two highest automatic weather stations in the world located on the southern slopes of the Everest at 7,945 and 8,430 metres.<\/p>\n The researchers, on the basis of radiocarbon dating, estimated the age of ice in the glacier to be 2,000 years old.<\/p>\n They warned that the highest glacier could disappear by the middle of this century.<\/p>\n The rate of ice loss measured is more than 80 times faster than the 2,000 years it took to form this thickness of ice.<\/p>\n “The long-term effect on the availability and stability of these water towers which will impact downstream communities is of major concern,” the ICIMOD said in the statement.<\/p>\n Glaciers in the Himalayas make a significant contribution to water resources for millions of people.<\/p>\n The research finding states that the change in ice cover in the Everest could have been triggered by climate change.<\/p>\n In December 2002, China and Nepal announced that the world’s highest peak is now taller by 86 centimetres after they re-measured Mt Everest at 8,848.86 metres, over six decades after India conducted the previous measurement in 1954.<\/p>\n The revised height of Mt Everest put an end to the decades-long dispute between the two neighbours on the height of the world’s tallest mountain that straddles their shared border.<\/p>\n The exact height of Mt Everest had been contested ever since a group of British surveyors in India declared the height of Peak XV, as it was initially called, to be 8,778 metres in 1847.<\/p>\n Mt Everest stands on the border between China and Nepal and mountaineers climb it from both the sides.<\/p>\n Mt Everest is known as Sagarmatha in Nepal while in China it is called Mt Qomolangma, the Tibetan name for the world’s highest peak. (PTI)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KATHMANDU, 8 Feb: Researchers in Nepal on Tuesday warned that the highest glacier on the top of Mount Everest could disappear by the middle of this century as the 2,000-year-old ice cap on the world’s tallest mountain is thinning at an alarming rate. The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) here said that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-183830","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-state-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183830\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}