Himalayas bare and rocky after reduced winter snowfall, scientists warn

[delta_p_delta_x]

If you know languages, the 'phrase Himalayas bare and rocky' is particularly sad, because himālaya/हिमालय in Sanskrit literally means 'house of snow'.

[bloak]

Thank you for pointing that out. Also, according to Wiktionary, the first part, "hima", is cognate with English "hibernate" (snow and winter are close enough), and the second part, "alaya", is cognate with English "slime" (which is less obvious, but slime is sticky and you stick things together to make a house).

[an-allen]

A third of humans are fed as a result of the melt of the Himalayan ice sheet. No ice sheet, no runoff, no flooding the rice paddy's, no rice…. famine.

[bamboozled]

What about all the people who say the world will be greener and therefore there will be more plants and food? It's almost like they just made that up to suit their worldview?

[tasuki]

Are you saying we need global warming for the melt to increase?

[adrianN]

It won’t be long before climate change starts causing mass migrations and the associated conflicts. With the current unstable world order we could really do without another massive problem.

[jmward01]

Arguably Iran is seeing turmoil, at least partially, due to drought.

https://www.npr.org/2025/08/17/nx-s1-5500318/iranian-officia...

[Cthulhu_]

As others have said, it's already happening, and it'll only get worse. But since it's not western countries it's not highlighted much.

But when the AMOC stops and western Europe's winters get longer there will be huge changes too. If I recall correctly, the AMOC stopping is a trigger for an ice age, that is, ice sheets / the north pole going down way south. This would make anything above France uninhabitable, if not wiped off the map entirely.

But it'd be a steady process of increasingly cold winters, so likely in our lifetime it'd mainly mean we change how we build houses and buildings. But long term, people would move.

[grumbelbart2]

Some say it was a factor in Syria as well:

https://www.dw.com/en/how-climate-change-paved-the-way-to-wa...

[_ink_]

I am really puzzled that this topic is not present in the public discourse.

[netsharc]

Are you writing from e.g. 2008? In 2010 Russian forest fires caused grain shortages and the price to go up, creating the Arab Spring and including the start of the Syrian civil war. That caused a wave of refugees that peaked in 2015. That caused the rise of right wing racist populism in Europe...

[verisimi]

They have been talking about climate change for years (ozone layer - get rid of your old fridge). And the media really does highlight weather events in other countries. I think the idea is one corporations can get behind - change, like war, is good for business.

[profsummergig]

Maybe they'll finally find the nuclear device lost on Nanda Devi, that has the potential to - *checks notes* - poison North India (via the glacier that feeds the Ganges).

[ninjin]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanda_Devi_Plutonium_Mission

[Guestmodinfo]

What's your opinion on a sudden flooding that happened some years ago in that region. I am an Indian so for some days our news were showing only that flooding news. It was sudden and super mssive and some news people suspected that same device or maybe one of the devices being accidentally going off. It was all speculation but the sudden and massive flooding was also unexplained to some extent. There has been several massive flooding in the region recently but all are due to extensive rain and cloud bursts. But one was unexplained in my untrained opinion. I remember it was some huge construction site. Wha they were building now I have forgotten that

[krasin]

> that (checks notes) has the potential to poison most of North India.

How large is the amount of plutonium in there? I highly doubt that it has the claimed potential.

[hahahahhaah]

What notes did you check?

[bamboozled]

Meteorologists, however, also add that there have been heavy snowfalls during some winters in recent years, but these have been isolated, extreme events rather than the evenly distributed precipitation of past winters.

Anecdotal but this is not dissimilar to how Japan has been lately with snowfall in the northern regions. It was once 30cm a night, almost every night during winter, fairly stable and predictable weather, we're still getting a lot of snow most winters, but it seems to happen in these major storm events now. Not consistent manageable snowfall, but more like a snow bomb goes off once a week, it gets warm, quite a lot of melt occurs and then boom, hit again. It's actually. taking some getting used too and requires adaption. It's a small thing but it makes it quite hard to plan for, and it makes life generally quite stressful. Also due to the rapid warming and cooling ice is a bit more of an issue now, like more injures from people getting hammered on icy / slick roads and paths.

[throwaway173738]

It’s the same in the Cascades. In a couple decades we’ll probably need a bunch of dams to have water capacity for the summer, because the snowpack melts so fast.

[softwaredoug]

Even in optimistic scenarios we won’t see this actual global temperature decrease again in our lifetimes. We can only hope to minimize the impact so that the curve softens and maybe in a century starts to go down.

[lm28469]

Hey, not so fast, we might fuck up the AMOC and reduce western europe temps by up to 15c!

[bamboozled]

For someone who loves winter, it's really sad news, but it's likely true.

[zvqcMMV6Zcr]

I always considered the conflict between India and China a bit silly, considering the size of those countries compared to tiny disputed territories. But the are totally are going to war over Himalayas water resources, aren't they?

[screye]

Not quite. Chinese rivers are fed by the eastern tibetan plateau while South Asia is fed by the western glaciers by the tallest mountains.

Bangladesh would be at risk because the Bramhaphtra sees upstream fresh water use by China. But China's use of Bramhaputra water is mostly energy related, not for drinking water or irrigation.

If decreasing population trends continue then this problem will solve itself.

[Qem]

IIRC the Himalayas are still being pushed up, as the indian plate pushes against Eurasia. That makes me wonder if the loss of ice will result in taller mountains, with less ice to grind the upwelling rock.

[snowwrestler]

The ice grinding primarily happens at the base of glaciers, in valleys.

Above the bergschrund (the head of the glacier), erosion in high mountains is accelerated by freeze-thaw cycles. Temps above freezing obviously contribute to this. But even well below freezing ambient temps, exposed dark rock in sunlight can absorb enough energy to cause local thawing, which results in rockfall.

[aussieguy1234]

Climate change is obviously the cause and this is not good for the environment.

But on the flip side, does this mean it's never been easier to climb the Himalayan mountains?

[snowwrestler]

No, the lack of snow and ice has greatly increased the rockfall hazard. It’s way easier to climb the highest mountains on snow and ice than on crumbling rock.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DM5sYghMr2g/

[scarecrowbob]

A lot of mountaineering is contingent upon the decomposing chossy rock being solidified by ice.

I can't speak to the Himalayas, but I can speak to southwest Colorado:

climbing a 70 degree snow face is fun, climbing the pile of shit underneath it with crampons is (to me) terrifying.

[dukeofdoom]

On the flipside, it might make greenland actually green.

[manarth]

I visited Greenland for 6 weeks in 1998 (youth expedition with BSES) and it's surprisingly green in the summer, with thick foliage at the lower altitudes. And the midges, oh my! They sure had a taste for visitors.

[malablaster]

I’m disappointed at the lack of before/after photos in that article. My ape brain would love them.

[rafterydj]

This is inflammatory, dismissive, and hardly constructive for discussion. Flame wars are discouraged by the rules.

All said, you're comment worked. I'm angry now. Good job.

[jibal]

Where "you guys" is apparently anyone who knows anything at all about the subject.

When in Congress, Al Gore worked hard to turn the government owned and run network into something that the entire population can use. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_techno...) I suggest that you take advantage of the incredible resource known as the Internet (and the WWW layered on top of it) to learn something about climate change and its underlying cause, anthropogenic global warming. See for instance https://skepticalscience.com/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climat...

[Arun2009]

What we tend to forget is that even with the catastrophic effects of climate change, the Earth is still vastly more inhabitable than other planets in the solar system. More pertinently, today we also have the intellectual tools to come with the right solutions for a good part of this problem. Solutions most likely won't require dramatic breakthroughs in fundamental science; probably just more clever engineering and better social and political coordination.

The real problem is that this is happening in one of the most socio-economically underdeveloped regions of the world. Despite isolated centers of modest excellence, India still hasn't fully absorbed the implications of the scientific revolution at a popular, cultural level. A good part of the population are still caught up in pre-modern modes of thinking. Rather than addressing this gap, the political establishment is only deepening an irrational and romantic belief in the worth of India's classical worldviews to continue their hold on power.

More than climate change, I dread the self-inflicted servitude to infantile notions that is holding India hostage. It's not really difficult to emerge out of this - we just need to shed our intellectual timidity and face reality as it is.

[mb7733]

> What we tend to forget is that even with the catastrophic effects of climate change, the Earth is still vastly more inhabitable than other planets in the solar system.

Speak for yourself. I have never forgotten that Earth is more inhabitable than Mars or Jupiter

[adrianN]

We already have all the tools needed to stop climate change. The current problem is that nobody wants to pay for it.

[tehjoker]

There are also pockets of India that are more advanced than many places elsewhere. I have a lot of love for Kerala. It doesn't have too many jobs, but it has a ton of heart and forward thinking people (which is why industrialists are scared of it).

[throw3456]

India produces abundance of food and got vast fertile lands. Modern farming is good but its gonna wipe out tens of millions of jobs if its done in no time.

[leosanchez]

I don't know what you are on about. You have pivoted to politics needlessly.

Current administration is investing in renewable energy. You are making them seem climate change deniers.

Keep your politics to reddit.

[zkmon]

Question is, is this human-caused change or the usual natural climate shift that Earth goes through every few thousand centuries or millennia? And is there anything humans should do about it, other than adapting to it?

[bamboozled]

People who hold this viewpoint interest me because you always seem to display a certain confidence that because the changing climate is "just part of a natural cycle" it's going to be fine. Not all changes on earth have been "just fine" and quite the contrary.

Look at a chart and you will see just how quickly the climate is changing and how we've done almost nothing to improve the situation, then why do you think it's "ok" because its "natural"? Are you nor alarmed about the mysterious force making the earth hotter? Isn't that alarming to you that we're just going along with a hotter and hotter planet? At what stage does this natural cycle stop?

Clearly, thanks to science, we know it's because of human activity, and I guess you could argue that is "natural", like our behavior is part of nature, but to pretend it's just some unknown warming force that's making the climate change seems much more disturbing to me than actually know why it's happening and addressing the issue?

[bmitc]

Have you seen literally any chart covering just the past one to two hundred years, or even just the past 50-70 years that covers emissions, population, industrial scale, environmental destruction, weather patterns, etc.? They would answer your question.

There is no end to the concrete evidence of the negative effect of humans towards the climate.

Here's something simple. Deforestation is directly caused by humans. (Note that wildfires "deforest" but without human intervention, they grow back and thus reforest.). So then ask yourself, what is the role of forests and jungles within the environment and climate?

Look at this article: https://ourworldindata.org/deforestation. What began 10,000 years ago, 200 years ago, and 100 years ago? This couldn't possibly be major changes in human activity could it?

[Cthulhu_]

This isn't actually the question though, and have you done any research yourself or are you Just Asking Questions [1]?

tl;dr we have extensive historical records of past weather progression through e.g. ice cores and the recent weather and climate changes are unheard of outside of cataclysmic events like meteor strikes or volcano eruptions, with a very close correlation with emissions. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_last....

As for whether we can do anything about it, personally I don't think so, we passed the point of no return... probably decades ago, even if emissions suddenly stopped then, the wheels were set in motion, for example through the melting of permafrost causing ???? amounts of sequestered plant matter to start decomposing and releasing methane and the like.

[lm28469]

The human impact is unquestionable. Is it part of a bigger cycle? maybe, but I feel like people use that as a cope to not do anything. "it doesn't exist", "it exist but it's not bad", "it's bad but it's not our fault", &c.

https://xkcd.com/1732/