What’s so special about mountains?

Björn Alfthan

By GRID-Arendal

May 24^th, 2018

In 2016, two unusual and deadly glacier avalanches occurred in Tibet’s Aru Mountains. These massive avalanches baffled glaciologists because they would not normally occur on what were gentle mountain slopes. Scientists now think that the entire ice mass slipped off its bed when meltwater caused by rising temperatures made its way through the glaciers and created a layer of lubricating mud which caused it to slide down the slope.

This Tibetan case is just one of many illustrating how our understanding the climate induced changes in high altitude glaciers is evolving. To help understand these changes, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will include a chapter on High Mountains in its “Special Report on Oceans and Cryrosphere in a Changing Climate” to be released in September 2019. The cryosphere includes regions which are covered in snow or ice and so the report also includes a chapter on the Arctic and Antarctica.

GRID-Arendal’s Björn Alfthan recently spoke to Carolina Adler, Executive Director of the Mountain Research Initiative and one of the lead authors of the mountains chapter. He asked exactly what areas will be examined.

Carolina: The outline agreed by governments included a specific request for us [authors of the chapter] to address climate change in tropical mountain glacier regions. To be able to address this request, we only address areas in the tropics and mid-latitudes with permanent snow, ice/glaciers, and permafrost – features of high altitude mountains in these climate zones.

Björn: The original Swiss request for a special report on mountains emphasised the importance of understanding the impacts of climate change on hydropower production in mountain regions. Does the chapter discuss this in detail?

Carolina: What we are really looking at in the report are the implications of climate variability on cryosphere change. How does climatic variability impact snow, ice and glacier change patterns, and what direct impact this has on what we call the "cryospheric services" – the main one being water. The implications of climate change on water are assessed across several sectors, not just hydropower, but also irrigation and general drinking water supplies and other uses of water. We also touch on tourism and recreation given this is a key ecosystem service delivered by high mountain landscapes.

Björn: The oceans are all connected but high mountains are like small islands in a sea of lowlands. Does that limit your ability to draw broad conclusions that apply to all mountain regions?

Carolina: You've touched upon one of the main challenges we face. Mountain regions are so geographically distributed and each mountain region has its own context which makes it difficult for us to generalise across all regions. Our colleagues on the oceans chapter talk about a "systems-oriented approach" in their assessment but it's much more difficult for us to do the same. Here, the mountain research community needs to focus more on methodologies that could allow us to say something comparable and consistent across several mountain regions.

Jomolhari Mountain in the Himalayas. Credit: Yannick Beaudoin/ GRID-Arendal

Björn: Will governments be able to use the findings from this report, for example to implement adaptation measures?

Carolina: The report is not meant to be policy prescriptive, so we don't give recommendations on what should or could work in mountain regions in terms of adaptation. We do however give an expert assessment of the state of knowledge on cryosphere change, how confident we are on the links to climate change as manifested in these observed or projected changes, key adaptation practices being applied and what some of the key gaps in research are.

Björn: Can you say something about the authors in the report and their academic backgrounds?

Carolina: What's interesting about the IPCC special reports is that they are intentionally inter-disciplinary. In our author group, we have climate, snow and ice experts, and also ecologists to cover the natural systems knowledge base. For the human side, we have economists, anthropologists, human geographers and political scientists in the mix as well. It's a fairly modest sized group, with representatives from the north and the south and from different mountain regions.

Björn: Are there any key messages emerging, and where can people go to find out more?

Carolina: Unfortunately, I can't go into the full details of the report because it isn't finalised. What I can say is that there are many interesting insights, some surprises, and the report is shedding light on several areas for potential new research that we would follow up with via the Mountain Research Initiative. The report is also now released for an expert review and those interested can register through the IPCC to view and comment on the first order draft. The review period will go to the 29th June of this year. The report is planned to be released in September 2019.