Glaciers of ‘third pole’ set to shrink by a third

and coastal zones, overlooking an area known as a ‘‘third pole’’ -because of the amount of ice it holds.

‘‘This is the climate crisis you haven’t heard of,’’ said Philippus Wester, who led the report. He predicted that the glacier region that straddles Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Burma, Nepal and Pakistan would shrink by two-thirds if no progress is made reining-in emissions.

‘‘Global warming is on track to transform the frigid, glacier-covered mountain peaks . . . to bare rocks in a little less than a century,’’ said Wester, of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).

The report, by 210 authors, said 36 per cent of the ice in the region would melt by 2100, even if governments hit the most ambitious targets in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which would limit a temperature rise to 1.5C. If no action was taken to reduce green house gas emissions, two thirds of the ice would melt.

Glaciers have thinned and retreated across most parts of the Hindu Kush Himalayan region since the Seventies.

Eklabya Sharma, the deputy director general of ICIMOD, told Reuters that if all the ice melted, it would push up sea levels by 1.5m.

The thaw would disrupt rivers including the Yangtze, Mekong, Indus, Yellow and Ganges, which directly or indirectly supply billions with food, energy and livelihoods.

The Himalayan glaciers, formed about 70 million years ago, are highly sensitive to changing temperatures.

Effects from their melting would range from an increase in air pollution to more extreme weather. Changing river flows would throw urban water systems and food and energy production off kilter, the study warned.

As glaciers have retreated, they have increased the number of dangerous glacial lakes that can burst and unleash catastrophic floods into valleys below. – Telegraph Group