Everest's Melting Glaciers

The mountaineer and filmmaker David Breashears has climbed Mt. Everest five times, and has recently been documenting the rapid disappearance of glaciers in the Himalayas. Breashears here illustrates the swift retreat of the Rongbuk glacier near Mount Everest by comparing photographs from the 1920s with pictures he took last November.

Breashears demonstrates that the Rongbuk has melted so severely that many sections of it are now 400 feet lower than 8 decades ago, and large swaths of it have disappeared.

Speaking at an Asia Society conference on the melting glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau, Breashears called Everest “the highest part of the highest water tower in the world” and says that the glaciers’ disappearance threatens water supplies in many parts of Asia.

 

 

  Courtesy, Yale Environment 360: http://e360.yale.edu