Scientists find no serious melting of glaciers in eastern part of Himalayas

Contrary to what many experts predicted, Chinese scientists have found no evidence in the middle and eastern part of the Himalayas that the Himalayan glaciers are retreating rapidly or melting fast.

The glaciers in the region are melting comparatively slowly, said Zhang Wenjing, a leading scientist on the international Himalaya expedition team.

In the 1980s, some overseas experts forecast that the Himalayan glaciers would melt completely in 50 years, and experts in China predicted that glaciers in west China would disappear around the year 2020.

Zhang, who is from the Chengdu Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said "those predictions may be excessively pessimistic -- so far glaciers in the middle and eastern part of Himalayas have not shrunk on any large scale."

"If that was the situation, the lakes under the glaciers would be flooded," Zhang said.

The globe is warming, but the glaciers in the Himalayas and other parts of western China will not melt in the coming decades and even hundreds of years, said Zhang.

Zhang said that another widely-reported forecast -- that the icecap in South Pole would soon melt totally -- is also too pessimistic.

The Antarctica icecap measures 13 million square kilometers. With a temperature 30 degrees centigrade below zero, a lot of heat is needed to make it melt, Zhang said.

He said that the Earth's temperature will not rise indefinitely, and a new "cold period" will come in several hundred years.

At the end of 2004, China had more than 47,000 glaciers, covering an area of 59,000 square kilometers.

The team launched the month-long expedition on Monday. There are 12 Chinese and seven foreign scientists from India, Nepal and Bhutan in the team.

The researchers will compare the physical geography, physiognomy, geology, ecosystem and economic development of the southern and northern slopes of the Himalayas.

Source: Xinhua