Written by Émilie St-Hilaire, Four Green Steps

With the threat of global warming becoming more present, we would expect cold regions to warm up and ice caps to melt. However it seems like the glaciers next to Earth’s highest peak are not melting away-the Karakoram Glaciers even seem to be gaining mass, in contrast to Antarctica’s and Greenland’s glaciers which are losing ice each year.

The Karakoram Ice Caps are actually melting, but the lost ice is quickly replaced by new one. According to satellite data, the Glaciers have even grown 11 centimeters between 1999 and 2008. Even with the ice gain of the Karakoram, the global ice loss form world’s glaciers stays positive, as the losses from Antarctica and Greenland are more important in size.

The precise reason for the ice gain is not known. Experts found a few hypotheses that could explain this unusual situation:

• A warmer climate generates more evaporation, and therefore more precipitations. Supplementary precipitations falling in the mountainous regions will contribute increasing the glaciers’ mass.
• The climate in the Karakoram region might be prone to yield an increased amount of rainfall in the winter, which feeds the Glaciers and compensates for the ice loss.
• Frequent avalanches bring a great amount of rock debris to the Karakoram Glaciers. This layer of debris could be acting as an insulator, preventing ice loss caused by warming temperatures. Avalanches also add more snow to the glaciers.

Climate change is a very complex process, and is not affecting the earth uniformly. While some areas will warm up, others might cool down due to indirect effects of global warming, like oceanic current redirection or precipitation increase. It is also hard to make predictions for the future of glaciers based on observations made in the last decade. The next decade could be totally different.

Image courtesy of Creative Commons.

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