Subcontinent Rivers in Trouble from Global Warming

September 21, 2004

NEW DELHI, INDIA, April 30, 2004: With the historical River Indus showing

telltale signs of going dry in the near future, Pakistan may witness an

acute water crisis in a few decades, according to an international team of

glacier scientists. This would happen because of excessive melting of

Himalayan glaciers that feed the Indus. As a result, for the next few

decades the river will have additional water but later a significant

portion of Indus water may vanish resulting in "serious consequences on

water availability and use in Pakistan." After the first few decades of

enhanced glacier melt, the flow in Indus may decrease between 30 to 90 per

cent, warned Dr. David N. Collins at the University of Salford in Britain

on Wednesday at a glacier meeting. Many Alpine rivers including the Rhine

are going through similar phases indicating a more-than-normal melting of

the glaciers. Siran, a tributary of the majestic Indus, that flows through

northwest Pakistan is displaying similar signs. The scientists have found

that water content in the river increased till the 1990s only to decline in

2000.

The same may be the fate of two other giants -- the Ganga and the

Brahmaputra -- as per a model created by the group including Dr. Collins

and a top Indian glacier expert, Dr. Syed Iqbal Hasnain, who is also Vice

Chancellor of University of Calicut. Developed under a DFID funded project

titled Sagarmatha (Snow and Glacier Aspects of Water Resource Management in

the Himalayas), the unique model was made using data from six sites in the

Upper Indus basin, 7 sites in the Brahmaputra basin and 8 sites in the

Ganga basin. However, the scenario is slightly better for the Ganga since

the glaciers that fed the river also receive adequate rainfall, unlike the

Indus. The rainfall protects the snow cover in the eastern part of the

Himalayas to some extent, Dr Hasnain said in explaining the model results.

For the Brahmaputra, there is a general decrease in the flow due to

permanent reduction in snow cover.

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