Why the rapidly melting ice at Mount Everest is disastrous for local communities

The highest mountain peak on earth is melting, quite literally, and could be catastrophic for the whole world

This season, 17 climbers died while climbing Mount Everest–the highest in the recent past. The director of Nepal’s tourism department told The Guardian that climate change was the root cause of the climbers’ death. “The main cause is the changing weather. This season the weather conditions were not favourable, it was very variable. Climate change is having a big impact in the mountains,” he said. The same month, British climber Kenton Cool said Mount Everest was turning “dry and rocky” and losing more snow. He had climbed the peak 17 times before that. Another research study found that Everest lost 2.000 years worth of snow in three decades.

Tenzin Choegyal Sherpa, who is one of the authors of the study, calls the Everest Base Camp his home. He grew up in Namche Bazar, which is on the way to the Everest base camp and watched mountaineers go by as a child. Sherpa’s grandfather was one of the sherpas in the first ever Everest expedition team led by Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa. Sherpas are an ethnic group native to the mountainous regions of Nepal—they act as guides, porters and rope-fixers, assisting those climbing Everest.

A pressing worry

“The next five years are going to be very hot for the Hindu Kush Himalayas,” he tells The Established. Sherpa, who currently works as a remote sensing and geoinformation research associate at ICIMOD (International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development) in Kathmandu, Nepal, aims to bridge the gap between the local community and scientists. He is watching his home melt, quite literally.

Mount Everest is not just the highest mountain peak on Earth, it’s also an important cultural and geopolitical icon. For many communities across the Hindu Kush Himalayas, it holds a sacred meaning. “My grandfather worries that with climate change and modernisation, the Sherpa people might lose their roots or will be forced to migrate. He always tells me there was so much more snow around [earlier] and that he hopes people begin respecting the environment.” The impact of climate change on Everest is not just isolated to the 8,848-metre-high peak, or even its neighbouring peaks. “The Himalayas are not just the third pole of the world, they are also the water towers for Asia. There are 10 major rivers that originate from the Himalayas that support a large population,” says Dr Dhrupad Choudhury, a researcher and development practitioner with a focus on climate and livelihood security who was formerly the chief of scaling operations for ICIMOD.

Erratic weather patterns–the new norm?

At the time of writing this article, at least 80 people have died due to flash floods and excessive rain in Himachal Pradesh, the Indian side of the Himalayas. Sherpa says we are living in the age of extremes, where erratic weather changes will soon be the new norm. “Last year, in Nepal, we had a dry winter with little snowfall but we got loads of snow during spring. Such untimely weather can also trigger glacial lake outburst and flash floods.” Glacial lakes are formed when the glacier melts and, as Sherpa explains, sometimes an avalanche falls into it causing a glacial lake outburst. “The resulting impact of this is devastating floods and excessive water around,” he explains.

A study published this year found that over 3 million Indians live in areas that can be swept away by glacial lake floods. These disasters will not only result in losses for infrastructure and food security but to communities and livelihoods too. “Due to recurring landslides and flash floods, people will be forced to leave their land and migrate. What other option do they have? We will see more migration and climate refugees, and this is an issue that persists across the Himalayas,” says Choudhury. 

A human-made disaster? 

This year, the Nepalese government issued a record number of 466 permits to climbers. Everest pools in several foreigners to Nepal every year, and pumps money into Nepal’s US$40 billion economy. This year, the country made US$5.8 million from permit fees alone. However, the administration has often faced backlash for over-issuing permits. Viral images on the Iinternet also show “crowding” or “human traffic jams” on Everest, as hundreds of climbers stand in line to summit the peak. Reports also reveal that there are tonnes of plastic waste, including climbing ropes on Everest which lay buried under the snow. The remains of mountaineers from decades ago are coming to the surface as ice melts on Mount Everest. “Increased human activities along with global warming have disturbed the clean ice. The landscape around the Everest base camp has physically changed in the last few decades. The glacier ice pinnacles in and around the base camp have considerably reduced. This is surely because of human activities at the base camp, including frequent movements and local heating effects,” said Dr Sudeep Thakuri, a climate scientist and Dean of Graduate School of Science and Technology and Graduate School of Engineering at Mid-West University, Nepal. “Other than pollution from human-generated waste, black carbon has also been reported on the surface of snow and ice, which further enhances melting.”

As for government policies for the protection of the Himalayas and overall environment, Choudhury points out it’s possibly too little, and too late. “Policymakers need to understand what is going on at the ground level. I don’t see long-term planning to mitigate the risks. They are not prepared in a trans-discipline way, but rather in silos. There is a need for well-stitched policies that work towards adaptation, reducing risks, and increasing resilience of the current systems.”

According to the 2015 Paris Agreement, signatory nations agreed to limit global warming temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius. However, a report in 2019 by ICIMOD stated that even 1.5 degrees is too hot for the Himalayas. Sherpa, who conducts annual expeditions for research with his team, found something disturbing in Khumbu glacier, on top of which the Everest base camp rests. “We were drilling the ice and we found that the temperature inside the ice is warmer than the mean temperature of the air.” This, Sherpa says, is a sign of glaciers becoming warmer from the inside. “These are minus-degree temperatures and we know that zero degrees is when ice starts changing its form to water. When we talk about glaciers and mountains, we are not just talking about a giant chunk of ice. They are time capsules,” he says. Sherpa fears that Khumbu glacier, which originates from Everest and is the highest in the world, has reached a “tipping point”. The Khumbu icefall is a passage mountaineers go through while climbing  Everest. “Khumbu is a glacier covered in debris, and it’s getting thinner and melting faster.” Sherpa’s team also observed that the crevasses around the glacier are getting larger—pointing to faster melting points.

These issues are not just isolated to Mount Everest and the Himalayas, but as Sherpa points out, they indicate a worrying trend for glaciers all over the globe, as the rate at which they are melting has doubled over the past 20 years. “People have denied climate action for so long because they think it’s somebody else’s problem, when actually, it’s everyone’s problem,” he says. “While the world debates the reality of climate change and its effects, communities from the mountains, near flood basins and vulnerable regions are starting to live the effects already.”

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