KATHMANDU: Ice on a glacier near the summit of Mount Everest that took millennia to form has shrunk dramatically in the last three decades due to climate change, a new study has shown.

The South Col formation may already have lost around 55 metres of thickness in the last 25 years, according to research led by the University of Maine and published this week by Nature.

Carbon dating showed the top layer of ice was around 2,000 years old, suggesting that the glacier was thinning more than 80 times faster than the time it took to form, the study said.

At that rate, South Col was “probably going to disappear within very few decades”, lead scientist Paul Mayewski told National Geographic. “It’s quite a remarkable transition,” he added.

Published in Dawn, February 6th, 2022