'Completely gone': melting glaciers worry Central Asia September 17, 2024
- Ana Cunha-Busch
- Sep 16, 2024
- 3 min read
By AFP - Agence France Presse
'Completely gone': melting glaciers worry Central Asia
Bruno KALOUAZ
Near a wooden hut high in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked up to a pile of gray rocks, remembering how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago.
At an altitude of 4,000 meters, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the imposing Tian Shan chain, which also extends into China, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan.
The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard hit by climate change.
As a glaciologist, Omarova is recording this process - worried about the future.
She walked six hours to reach the modest, triangular-shaped hut that serves as a scientific station - almost in the clouds.
“Eight or ten years ago, you could see the glacier with snow,” Omorova told AFP.
“But in the last three to four years, it has completely disappeared. There's no snow, there's no glacier,” she said.
The effects of a warming planet have been particularly visible in Central Asia, which has seen a wave of extreme weather disasters.
The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to the population of the landlocked region, which is already suffering from water shortages.
Acting as water towers, glaciers are crucial to the region's food security, and vital freshwater reserves are dwindling fast.
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Equipped with a measuring device, Omorova knelt over a torrent of meltwater, standing on the ash-covered ice that glistened in the strong sunlight.
“We're measuring everything,” she said. “The glaciers can't regenerate because of the rising temperatures.”
A little further on, she points to the shrinking Adygene glacier, saying that it has retreated “about 16 centimeters” every year.
“That's more than 900 meters since the 1960s,” she said.
The once majestic glacier is just one of thousands in the area that are slowly disappearing.
Between 14% and 30% of the Tian-Shan and Pamir glaciers, the two main mountain ranges in Central Asia, have melted in the last 60 years, according to a report by the Eurasian Development Bank.
Omorova warned that things are only getting worse.
“The melting is much more intense than in previous years,” she said.
With scientists warning that 2024 is likely to be the hottest year on record, professions like hers have grown enormously in importance.
But resources are scarce in Kyrgyzstan, one of the poorest countries in former Soviet Central Asia.
“We don't have any measuring equipment, and there isn't enough money to transport things to our observation station, where we don't even have electricity,” Omorova said.
She hopes that the Kyrgyz government will draft a law to protect the ice giants.
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The shrinking glaciers have also created a new threat for Kyrgyz towns and cities, with meltwater forming new lakes before falling down the mountains in dangerous torrents, including towards the capital, Bishkek.
Further down the valley - in a grass-covered part of the mountain at 2,200 meters - two scientists, brothers Sergei and Pavel Yerokhin, were working on the banks of the fast-flowing water.
The older brother, Sergei, 72, warned of the dangers of the torrents.
“This mass of water carries stones with it down the valley and can reach the towns,” he told AFP.
He said their task was to monitor and predict the flow of water and “draw up maps to ensure that people and infrastructure don't end up in these dangerous areas.”
His brother Pavel installed a sensor about 50 centimeters above the water that would send radio signals in the event of flooding.
- Halving by 2050
For the Kyrgyz government, the melting glaciers threaten more than damage to infrastructure.
Water distribution in the region - planned in the Soviet era - remains a thorny issue and is a frequent source of tension between neighbors.
Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan - which are home to around 10,000 glaciers each, according to Omorova - are the main suppliers of water to Central Asia.
“We share water with our downstream neighbors,” said Omorova, referring to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, which are home to most of Central Asia's population.
In addition to rising temperatures, the glaciers also face another threat: a growing appetite for the region's immense natural resources, including gold, the extraction of which with chemicals accelerates the melting of the ice.
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have stepped up their efforts to draw attention to an impending catastrophe.
Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov warned last year that forecasts show that Central Asia's glaciers “will halve by 2050 and disappear completely by 2100”.
bk/led-oc/cw/bc
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