Climate Change threatens glaciers in the Himalayas
The Karakoram range in the Himalayas is renowned for its glaciers, some of which are among the largest and longest outside the polar regions.
As a result of climate change, these glaciers are melting at an accelerated rate, leading to the formation of new glacial lakes in the Hunza River basin and in other valleys of the range, as seen in this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image of 15 April 2023.
A recent article published in the Nature scientific journal highlights the critical dependency of the Hunza River basin on frozen water resources and warns that future changes in the hydrological regime in this area could have serious consequences for the water flow of the Indus River.
Copernicus provides satellite data and services that enable the monitoring of glaciers, including their size, shape, and movement over time.
