Asia’s shrinking glaciers protect large populations from drought stress

About 800 million people depend in part on meltwater from the thousands of glaciers in the high mountains of Asia. Water stress makes this region vulnerable to drought, but glaciers are a uniquely drought-resilient source of water. Here I show that seasonal glacier meltwater is equivalent to the bas...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Nature (London) Vol. 569; no. 7758; pp. 649 - 654
Main Author:	Pritchard, Hamish D.
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	London Nature Publishing Group UK 30.05.2019 Nature Publishing Group
Subjects:	704/106/125 704/242 704/4111 Acclimatization Asia Basins Dehydration - prevention & control Drought Droughts Economic development Ecosystem Freezing Glacier melting Glaciers Humanities and Social Sciences Humans Hydrology Ice Cover - chemistry Meltwater Mountains multidisciplinary Politics Populations Precipitation Rain Regional development Risk reduction River basins Rivers Science Science (multidisciplinary) Seasons Temperature Water scarcity Water shortages Water stress Water supply Water Supply - statistics & numerical data Asia Afghanistan Pakistan United States > US Uzbekistan Turkmenistan Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan Nepal India
ISSN:	0028-0836, 1476-4687, 1476-4687
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	About 800 million people depend in part on meltwater from the thousands of glaciers in the high mountains of Asia. Water stress makes this region vulnerable to drought, but glaciers are a uniquely drought-resilient source of water. Here I show that seasonal glacier meltwater is equivalent to the basic needs of 221 ± 59 million people, or most of the annual municipal and industrial needs of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. During drought summers, meltwater dominates water inputs to the upper Indus, Aral and Chu/Issyk-Kul river basins. This reduces the risk of social instability, conflict and sudden migrations triggered by water scarcity, which is already associated with the large, rapidly growing populations and hydro-economies of these basins. Regional meltwater production is, however, unsustainably high—at 1.6 times the balance rate—and is expected to increase in future decades before ultimately declining. These results update and reinforce a previous publication in Nature on this topic, which was retracted after an inadvertent error was discovered. Glaciers in the high mountains of Asia provide a uniquely drought-resilient source of water, supplying summer meltwater sufficient for the basic needs of around 200 million people.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 14 content type line 23
ISSN:	0028-0836 1476-4687 1476-4687
DOI:	10.1038/s41586-019-1240-1