Himalayan glaciers are melting twice as fast now as they were before the turn of the century, according to a new study that relies on Cold War-era satellite imagery
Mount Everest , the world highest peak, and other peaks of the Himalayan range are seen from air during a mountain flight from Kathmandu April 24, 2010.
"This is the clearest picture yet of how fast Himalayan glaciers are melting over this time interval, and why," said lead author Joshua Maurer, a doctoral candidat e at Columbia University in New York. Other factors the researchers blamed were changes in rainfall, with reductions tending to reduce ice cover, and the burning of fossil fuels which lead to soot that lands on snowy glacier surfaces, absorbing sunlight and hastening melting.
The model relies on more accurate representations of the flow of "outlet glaciers," river-like bodies of ice that connect to the ocean. As ocean waters have warmed over the past two decades, they have melted the floating ice that once shielded the outlet glaciers.
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