It has been reported worldwide that the Himalayan glaciers are retreating fast due to global warming. But now a report released by India’s Ministry of Environment last week claims that the picture of fast retreating glaciers is simply not accurate.

The report, by a senior glaciologist called Vijay Kumar Raina, says that earlier studies based on the measurements of a handful of glaciers did not present a true account, and that in fact, India’s 10,000 plus Himalayan glaciers are not shrinking rapidly in response to climate change.

The report disputes the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) 2007 report, which stated clearly that Himalayan glaciers ‘are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035, and perhaps sooner, is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate.’

Raina’s report, ‘Himalayan Glaciers: A State-of-Art Review of Glacial Studies, Glacial Retreat and Climate Change’ has created a storm of controversy amongst scientists and journalists. The report draws on studies and findings, including remote-sensing satellite data and surveys conducted at sites often higher than 5,000 metres.

The report even claims that the Siachin glacier in Kashmir, where Indian and Pakistani forces are stationed at 6,000 metres, has not shrunk that much at all. Stories written in the popular press that Siachin is shrinking are wrong, says Raina. His report notes that the glacier has ‘not shown any remarkable retreat in the last 50 years.’

Several Western based scientists are in concurrence with this report. I attended a presentation at a climate change conference held in Kathmandu in September, given by an American scientist, Professor Richard Armstrong from the University of Colorado. He had done satellite-based research on glaciers in the Eastern Himalayas, commissioned by the World Bank. His conclusion was that there was no major melting going on in the glaciers located above 5,400 m! He agreed, however, that there is melting going on at lower elevations.

‘There is an increase in melt in lower elevation glaciers and the hazards of moraine damned lakes are real, but I believe that the rate of retreat of the glaciers has been exaggerated’ he told us later at a press conference. When I asked him about the Indus Basin, he replied that he would like to do a conclusive study on the Indus Basin soon, but he believed that the glaciers there are quite healthy.

Of course Professor Armstrong has not exactly gone up to the glaciers in these mountains to do the study — the research was done mostly by satellite imagery provided by NASA and other information. ‘There can be a large margin of error when doing remote sensing’, explained the Director General of the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD based in Kathmandu) when I turned to him for further clarification. ‘The problem is that there is a lack of information and the higher up we go, the less we have. No research is done regularly on this region’.

Another scientist who does agree with Raina’s report is Kenneth Hewitt, a geo-scientist at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada, who recently returned from an expedition to K2. He observed five glacier advances and a single retreat in the Karakorams. Such evidence certainly challenges the view that the glaciers in the region are disappearing fast.

I got the chance to talk to Ken Hewitt a few days before he left for Skardu in September. ‘Nowhere in the upper Indus Basin do you have the collapse of glaciers like in Nepal and the Alps’, he told me. ‘They are actually holding their own or growing. They could well be growing because of climate change. The summer weather is cloudier and there is more snowfall’. Hewitt pointed out that this may be a temporary phenomenon and that there was a serious need to look closely at what is happening and that more glaciers needed to be tracked. Wapda, he says, is starting to operate field stations again to monitor the glaciers.

Growing glaciers, however, are not exactly good news. According to Hewitt, ‘Surging glaciers are dangerous because they store water. The Hunza River has declined by 20 per cent due to the advance of glaciers in the area. These glaciers are storing ice… This is a different problem and needs to be investigated’.

What emerges from talking to all these scientists is that the glaciers in the region are certainly changing due to climate change, but in what way, we just don’t know for sure. In the meantime, ICIMOD would like to see the Himalayan countries get together on one platform to combine their research and give a clear message to the rest of the world during the UN’s Climate Change Summit to be held in Copenhagen this December.