July 17, 2010

Photos taken by a mountaineer on Mt. Everest, from the same spot where similar pictures were taken in 1921, reveal alarming ice loss. The Asia Society arranged for the pictures to be taken in exactly the same place where British climber George Mallory took photos in 1921. The photographs reveal that the ice of the Himalaya is disappearing, and that there is an alarming loss in ice mass over the 89-year period. The photos taken by Mallory from the north face of Everest reveal a powerful, white, S-shaped sweep of ice.  Experts say that the evidence is incontrovertible. Images taken from the same spot in 2010 by mountaineer David Breashears show that the main Rongbuk Glacier is shrunken and withered. "Returning to the exact same vantage points, Breashears has meticulously recreated their shots, pixel for pixel. The photographs illustrate the severity of the loss of ice mass among the glaciers surrounding Mount Everest," an Asia Society statement said. The findings are vitally important because the Himalaya is home to the world's largest sub-polar ice reserves. The melt waters of these high altitude glaciers supply crucial seasonal flows to the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Salween, Irrawaddy, Mekong, Yangtze and Yellow rivers, which hundreds of millions of people downstream depend on for their livelihoods. If the present rate of melting continues, many of these glaciers will be severely diminished by the middle of this century.