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Mountain Water Supply to Two Billion People Could Change
January 18th, 2021
Courtesy of Scientific American (subscription required), a detailed look at how data about Earth’s 78 most important mountaintops foretell changes in the amount and timing of snowmelt: The nights are long inside a tent 5,300 meters above sea level at the snout of Nepal’s Yala Glacier. At 8:00 P.M., after a meal of Nepali dal bhat (lentils […]
Read more »Thirst Stalking Towns In The Himalayas
March 7th, 2020
Via India Climate Dialogue, a look at how urban settlements in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region are facing acute water scarcity due to dying mountain springs and changes brought on by climate change: The Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region is the water tower for most of Asia, but many of its residents face increasing water […]
Read more »The Merchants of Thirst
January 11th, 2020
Courtesy of The New York Times, an interesting article on how – in many developing countries – private water tanker operators profit from growing water scarcity: It had been 11 days since a ruptured valve reduced Kupondole district’s pipeline flow to a dribble, and the phones at Pradeep Tamanz’s tanker business wouldn’t stop ringing. A […]
Read more »Thirsty Kathmandu Waits For Water That Never Arrives
December 13th, 2019
Via Third Pole.net, a report on how one of the most rapidly urbanising cities on the planet – the capital city of Nepal – is struggling with old projects sabotaged by controversies and bad strategies as its people go thirsty: In May of this year the residents of Nepal’s capital Kathmandu formally established a forum […]
Read more »With Rising Temperatures, Stark Changes Ahead for Asia’s Water Tower
September 27th, 2019
Courtesy of Circle of Blue, a report on how the melting of the Hindu Kush Himalaya region will alter water supplies for a quarter of the planet’s people: New analysis shows that the eight-country region will warm faster than the rest of the world in the coming decades At least one-third of the glacial ice will […]
Read more »The Unwinnable Contest For Himalayan Water Resources
July 4th, 2019
Via East Asia Forum, commentary on the competing draws on Himalayan water supplies: For millions of years, monsoonal winds have cycled between Asia’s tropical seas and the Tibetan Plateau, delivering snow to its high-altitude mountains and rains to the plains below them. The melting snow and summer rains combine to create a system of rivers […]
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