[NY Post] It has stopped snowing in the Himalayas.As a result, the water supply two billion people is under threat.
The mountain range reaches 2500km from Afghanistan in the west to Myanmar in the east.
Its high peaks and valleys are covered in ice – or should be.
The annual cycle of melting snow feeds 12 major river basins that wind their way across the Central and East Asian landscape.
These are the major water sources for a dozen nations But measurements have revealed a steady decline in snow falling across the Himalayas in recent decades.
This season, it tumbled to an overall 23-year low.
“This is an alarming trend,” says International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) scientist Sher Muhammad.
“We are observing such deficit situations occurring in continuous succession.”
Some rivers are suffering more than others.
The HKH Snow Update 2025 report reveals snow catchments for the Mekong and Salwen Rivers that feed into Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia are worse than 50 per cent lower than average.
China’s Yangtze catchment has 26 percent less snow. The Ganges River of India and Bangladesh is down 24 percent.
As is the Indus that feeds Kashmir and Pakistan.
The reduced snowfalls would not be a problem if it were a one-off event, but the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) says this has happened in five out of the past six years.
It’s an acceleration of a trend observed over the past quarter century and the implications of this trend are enormous.
“Australian policymakers are vastly underestimating how climate change will disrupt national security and regional stability across the Indo-Pacific,” warns Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) analyst Mike Copage.
DRYING UP
Less snow in the Himalayas means less spring melt and less insulation for any ice or glaciers beneath.
Time for water wars