Tibetan glaciers face multiple threats from South Asia air pollution

The Tibetan Plateau is the largest and highest such elevation in the world, and is a critical water resource for almost two billion people in Asia, but the land mass, known as the “Asian water tower”, is under a growing climate threat.

Scientists say the primary culprit – an air pollutant known as black carbon – could result in unprecedented melting of the plateau’s glaciers, Asia One reported this week.

A study led by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources has found that increasing concentrations of black carbon in South Asia have reduced levels of summer precipitation over the Southern Tibetan Plateau, which in turn has accelerated the shrinking of that region’s glaciers.

The findings have prompted the scientists to call for cuts in black carbon emissions in South Asia to preserve a crucial water balance on the plateau and avoid future water shortages and geological hazards.

Black carbon – a type of soot – is a component of fine particulate matter. It results from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and biomass.

Black carbon emissions contribute to global warming by absorbing solar energy and then heating the surroundings. When deposited on ice or snow, black carbon reduces surface albedo, or the ability to reflect sunlight, which then heats the surface and quickens glacial melting. Ice covered regions like the Arctic, Antarctic and the Himalayas are all vulnerable to black carbon emissions, Asia One reported.

But in the case of the Tibet Plateau, the world’s third largest store of ice, such emissions do not have to travel far. South Asian countries are some of the world’s worst air polluters. Black carbon emissions from the Indian subcontinent are carried aloft to the Tibetan Plateau and worsen glacial melting, in what the researchers call a “direct effect”.

In their stud the researchers also discovered that black carbon originating from South Asia has impacted the glaciers by reducing the amount of precipitation in the Southern Tibetan Plateau.

In their analysis of precipitation data from 1961 to 2016, the researchers found that summer precipitation amounts over the Southern Tibetan Plateau began to decline in 2004 by an average of 4.4mm a year.

Summer precipitation accounts for more than 60 percent of the total annual precipitation over the plateau, so declines in the seasonal rains resulted in glacial shrinkage, the study said. And since the beginning of this century, the problem has accelerated.

Kang Shichang, one of the study’s corresponding authors and a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said: “Black carbon emissions are expected to increase in South Asia. It is imperative to reduce emissions in South Asia to protect the Asian water tower.”