Terminal retreat
even as the Indian scientific community continues to haggle over the extent of global warming impact on the Himalayan ice-fields, a study indicates that four glaciers of the Baspa basin of Himachal Pradesh face terminal retreat. In other words they may dry up. "If climatic conditions remain same as those in 2000, then our climate model suggests that the four glaciers will disappear by 2040,' claims Anil V Kulkarni, a researcher with Marine and Water Resources Group, Space Applications Centre (sac), Ahmedabad. Fifteen more glaciers of the basin are also on thin ice, as they too are losing more snow than what is getting accumulated.
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All the 19 glaciers were studied with the help of weekly images taken during 2000-02 by the Indian Remote Sensing Satellite, and field data collected by the Geological Survey of India. To arrive at their conclusion, the researchers essentially calculated glacial mass balance