Gangotri glacier is in danger - it is facing rising temperature with less snowfall

#gangotri #uttarakhand #glacier #ganges A research conducted by the Snow and Avalanche Study Establishment, Chandigarh, has revealed that the health of the majestic Gangotri glacier that feeds the river Ganges has been affected. It is experiencing rise in surrounding temperatures - maximum temperature in the region has shot up by 0.9 degree Celsius and, coupled with reduction in snowfall that has reduced by 37 cm annually, it is endangered.
The team of climate scientists have recorded and analyzed snow and meteorological parameters for a period of 13 years from 2000 to 2012 and discovered the warming trend.
This has been reported in ibnlive.com dated 6 December 2015.

The report forms a part of the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) under the Ministry of Defense. The observation is the 'Bhojbasa' observation station located nearly 5-Km south from the Gangotri glacier snout named 'Gaumukh'..
It is a known fact that the glaciers, including the Gangotri, have been receding over the last few years and the study goes to prove the point.
Gangotri glacier is situated in Uttarakhand district and is 30.2-Km long. It is the second largest in India and is one of the primary sources of fresh water supply to the river Ganges. Incidentally, Gangotri has been found to have retreated more than 1,500 metres in the last 70 years.

Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org)

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Latest upgrade on Mars – it has enough ice on it to create a 1.1-meter high layer

#wateronmars #UniversityofCopenhagen #redplanet The Red planet Mars, supposedly the abode of green colored tiny men, is believed to be having thousands of glaciers buried below its dusty surface and, enough frozen water to blanket the planet with a 3.6-foot(1.1- metre) thick layer of ice.
This has been revealed by Nanna Bjornholt Karlsson, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen’s Neils Bohr Institute and reported in zeenews.india.com dated 9 April 2015.

The glaciers are in two bands in the mid-southern and mid-northern latitudes and this has been found from radar data that has been collected by Mars-orbiting satellites along with computer models of ice flows. These show that the planet has about 5.3 trillion cubic feet (150 billion cubic metres) of water locked in the ice.
The results have been published in the journal Geophysical Research Letter.
Scientists are trying to get to the bottom of the mystery of how Mars transformed from a warm, wet and presumably Earth-like planet early in its history into the cold, dry desert that it is today.
There are theories that billions of years ago, Mars, which lacks a protective, global magnetic field, lost much of its atmosphere. Therefore, scientists are trying to determine how much of the planet’s water was stripped away and how much still remains locked in ice in underground reservoirs.
In the opinion of scientists, the glaciers have remained more or less intact because they are protected under a thick layer of dust. They are searching for evidence of river beds, streams and hydrated minerals, and are also studying telltale molecules in the Martian atmosphere. Based on their preliminary studies, they have concluded that the planet probably had an ocean more than a mile deep covering almost half of its northern hemisphere.
Unfortunately, the planet Mars has lost about 87 percent of that water.

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