Everest’s largest glacier is melting fast

Ice on a glacier near the summit of Mount Everest, which took millennia to form, has been melting rapidly over the past three decades due to climate change, according to a study.

The South Col glacier has lost about 55 meters of thickness in the last 25 years, according to research carried out by the University of Maine and published this week by the journal Nature.

Carbon 14 dating has shown that the top layer of the glacier is about 2,000 years old, but is now losing thickness 80 times faster than when it formed, according to the study.

At this rate, the South Col glacier “is probably going to disappear in a few decades,” scientist Paul Mayewski, who led the study, told National Geographic.

This glacier is about 7,900 meters high, about a kilometer below the level of the summit of Everest, the highest mountain in the world.

According to other researchers, other glaciers in the Himalayan chain are melting at a high rate, causing the creation of hundreds of lakes on the slopes of the mountain range, with the consequent risk of generating floods. (I)