This Nature Geoscience article describes a surprising local cooling and drying phenomenon from an experiment set up from a glamorized elevation (Pyramid station, Mount Everest) in Nepal.
According to the study, though the Himalayan glaciers are melting rapidly, however the local cooling and drying phenomenon may be helping to slow the effect. “When warming temperatures hit certain high-altitude ice masses, it sets off a surprising reaction that blows robust cold winds down the slopes”, writes CNN quoting from the study.
Francesca Pellicciotti, professor of glaciology at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria and lead author of the study, told CNN, “The warming climate creates a greater temperature gap between the surrounding air above Himalayan glaciers and the cooler air directly in contact with the ice masses’ surface. This leads to an increase in turbulent heat exchange at the glacier’s surface and stronger cooling of the surface air mass.”
A similar study previously covered by CNN had shown that the Himalayan glaciers were melting 65% faster in the 2010s compared with the previous decade. Fanny Brun, a research scientist at the Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement in Grenoble, France, told CNN, “The main impact of rising temperature on glaciers is an increase of ice losses, due to melt increase. The primary mechanisms are the lengthening and intensification of the melt season. They cause glaciers to thin and retreat, leading to deglaciated landscapes that tend to further increase the air temperature due (to)larger energy absorption by the surface.”
The meteorological observations for the study were collected for 30 years from the Pyramid International Laboratory/Observatory climate station located at a glacierized elevation of 5,050 meters (16,568 feet) along the southern slopes of Mount Everest.
“Even if the glaciers can’t preserve themselves forever, they might still preserve the environment around them for some time. Thus, we call for more multidisciplinary research approaches to converge efforts toward explaining the effects of global warming,” Pellicciotti told CNN.