Industrial dust and soil, blown thousands of miles, settle on ice sheets and add to rising sea level threatWhen American geologist Ulyana Horodyskyj set up a mini weather station at 5,800m on Mount Himlung, on the Nepal-Tibet border, she looked east towards Everest and was shocked. The world's highest glacier, Khumbu, was turning visibly darker as particles of fine dust, blown by fierce winds, settled on the bright, fresh snow. "One-week-old snow was turning black and brown before my eyes," she said.The problem was even worse on the nearby Ngozumpa glacier, which snakes down from Cho Oyu - the world's sixth highest mountain. There, Horodyskyj found that so much dust had been blown on to the surface that the ability of the ice to reflect sunlight, a process known as albedo, dropped 20% in a single month. The dust that was darkening the brilliant whiteness of the snow was heating up in the strong sun and melting the snow and ice, she said. Continue reading...
Dark snow: from the Arctic to the Himalayas, the phenomenon that is accelerating glacier melting
5. červenece 2014 5:00
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Celý článek: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/05/dark-snow-speeding-glacier-melting-rising-sea-levels
Zdroj: The Guardian