STAFF REPORT IBD: Astronauts aboard the International Space Station has recently taken advantage of their unique vantage point to photograph the Himalayas, looking south from over the Tibetan Plateau. Mt. Everest (29,035 feet) is at right.
A new study reveals that some Himalayan glaciers in the Karakoram mountain range may actually be getting bigger, according to a study published in the April issue of the journal Nature Geoscience – a surprising quirk in the planets response to a changing climate.
The Karakoram range runs along the India-China-Pakistan border and is home to about half the volume of the Himalayan glaciers, including K2 – the world’s second highest peak. Using computer models to compare the ice volume in satellite photos from 1999 and 2008, the study shows that some glaciers are holding steady and even gaining ice mass.
“The rest of the glaciers in the Himalayas are mostly melting while the study researcher Julie Gardelle, of CNRS-Université Grenoble, France, reveals saying the rest of the glaciers in the Himalayas are mostly melting, in that they have negative mass balance.
Glaciologist Jonathan Bamber (who was not part of the research team) cautioned that this study doesn’t alter his view that the climate is changing.
“This new study doesn’t change our view of the risks and threats from climate change,” he said in an online chat at the Guardian. “What it does do is improve our knowledge of the recent behavior of one part of the climate system.”

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