With a deadly avalanche, it appears climate change may now be affecting a once stable region of the Tibetan Plateau.
That's the conclusion of an international team of researchers who have published an analysis of the July 2016 disaster in the Dec. 9 issue of the Journal of Glaciology.
On July 17, more than 70 million tons of ice broke off from the Aru glacier in the mountains of western Tibet and tumbled into a valley below, taking the lives of nine nomadic yak herders living there.
To perform a kind of forensic analysis of the avalanche, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences joined with two glaciologists from The Ohio State University: Lonnie Thompson, Distinguished University Professor in the School of Earth Sciences and research scientist at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center (BPCRC), and Ellen Mosley-Thompson, Distinguished University Professor in Geography and director of BPCRC.
The most important fact about the avalanche, said Thompson, is that it lasted only four or five minutes (according to witnesses), yet it managed to bury 3.7 square miles of the valley floor in that time. He said something -- likely meltwater at the base of the glacier -- must have lubricated the ice to speed its flow down the mountain.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161209080826.htm
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