"In a business as usual scenario, where we fail to curtail fossil fuel burning in the decades ahead meaningfully, we can expect a substantial decrease — nearly 100% loss — of water availability to downstream regions of the Tibetan Plateau. I was surprised at just how large the predicted decrease is even under a scenario of modest climate policy. Professor Michael Mann, Astrophysicist at Penn State University
A new comprehensive and peer-reviewed study on the highly vulnerable glaciers of the Tibetan Plateau to warming ( known as the water tower ) threatens the lives of over two billion people who live downstream. The authors found that weak climate policies will bring about "irreversible declines of freshwater availability" in Afghanistan and Central Asia with a one hundred percent freshwater drop to Pakistan, Kashmir, and Nothern India.
The worst-case scenario was not studied as many in the scientific community, for various reasons, decline to examine techniques of what a three-degree celsius temperature rise or higher would look like.
Though, that thought process is beginning to change as a major study found that compounded hazards on top of warming temperatures must be understood to help implement policies regarding the threat of human extinction by multiple simultaneous climate catastrophes. As H.J. Schellnhuber of PNAS noted in a separate study; 'There will be no ice age again. The human impact is so powerful already (that's why they call it the Anthropocene) that we have suppressed the Quaternary planetary dynamics.
From Penn State ( via Eureka Alert/AAAS):
Tibet Water Storage (TWS) is the frozen water stored in the glaciers of Tibet.
Among their results, which published today (August 15th) in the journal Nature Climate Change, the team found that climate change in recent decades has led to severe depletion in TWS (-15.8 gigatons/year) in certain areas of the Tibetan Plateau and substantial increases in TWS (5.6 gigatons/year) in others, likely due to the competing effects of glacier retreat, degradation of seasonally frozen ground, and lake expansion.
The team’s projections for future TWS under a moderate carbon emissions scenario — specifically, the mid-range SSP2-4.5 emissions scenario — suggest that the entire Tibetan Plateau could experience a net loss of about 230 gigatons by the mid-21st century (2031‒2060) relative to an early 21st century (2002‒2030) baseline.
More specifically, excess water loss projections for the Amu Darya basin — which supplies water to central Asia and Afghanistan — and the Indus basin — which supplies water to Northern India, Kashmir and Pakistan — indicate a decline of 119% and 79% in water-supply capacity, respectively.
“Our study provides insights into hydrologic processes affecting high-mountain freshwater supplies that serve large downstream Asian populations,” said Long. “By examining the interactions between climate change and the TWS in the historical period and future by 2060, this study serves as a basis to guide future research and the management by governments and institutions of improved adaptation strategies.”
Indeed, Mann added, “Substantial reductions in carbon emissions over the next decade, as the U.S. is now on the verge of achieving thanks to the recent Inflation Reduction Act, can limit the additional warming and associated climate changes behind the predicted collapse of the Tibetan Plateau water towers. But even in a best-case scenario, further losses are likely unavoidable, which will require substantial adaptation to decreasing water resources in this vulnerable, highly populated region of the world.”
Mann noted that more alternative water supply sources, including intensified groundwater extraction and water transfer projects, may be necessary to meet the amplified water shortage in the future.tHE gqp
Vote the GQP out of office; these obstructionists must be removed from office for more robust climate adaption and decarbonization policies to have any effect on the trajectory that we are currently on.