Abstract
Recent studies showed that the Himalayan glaciers are reducing alarmingly. This is attributed to global warming. Since the melt water of Himalayan glaciers and snow is the principal source of water for several rivers, a decrease of this source is a calamity for the large fraction of global population living in nearby regions such as India. In Asia for the 60% global population only 36% of global water is available. Any further decrease of this vital necessity makes the very existence of billions of people doubtful. Here we show, using both observations and one IPCC-AR4 model with high horizontal resolution, that the Himalayan region in fact underwent a maximum warming of 2.5°C from 1950 to 1999 and would reach the highest temperature rise of 9°C in 2100. Temperature and rainfall variations determine a simple climate classification proposed by Köppen. We show changes that occur in climate and biosphere using this classification. Also we discussed the impact of warming and resulting changes in Köppen climates on the floods and malaria in India.
Highlights
An inevitable consequence of most of the human activity such as industrial revolution is the burning of fossil fuels, a process which oxidizes carbon into carbon dioxide (CO2) leading to increase of this greenhouse gas
Since the melt water of Himalayan glaciers and snow is the principal source of water for several rivers, a decrease of this source is a calamity for the large fraction of global population living in nearby regions such as India
The floods in the northern Indian states of Bihar and Assam in 2008 dislocating millions of people and killing some are at least partially due to the initial swelling of the Kosi and Brahmaputra rivers resulting from the Himalayan glacier melting
Summary
An inevitable consequence of most of the human activity such as industrial revolution is the burning of fossil fuels, a process which oxidizes carbon into carbon dioxide (CO2) leading to increase of this greenhouse gas. [9] presented observational evidence to show that the surface air temperature on the eastern Himalayas or Tibetan Plateau has increased by about 1.8 ̊C over the period 1960-2007. In view of the strong societal implications of the Himalayan glacier mass loss due to increase of temperature, it is of crucial importance to know how the temperature varies in a warming scenario. This can only be provided by one of the latest generation of global climate models with some degree of reliability. In the present study we use a high resolution [13] Ocean Coupled Atmospheric General Circulation Model (GCM) to estimate the temperature change over the Himalayan regions. We analyze the impact of these changes on floods in rivers fed by Himalayan snow and glacier melt and a tropical disease, Malaria
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