In a Jan 29, 2008 speech, Boulton now -check reported that by 2050 “most of the Himalayan glaciers would be gone”:
The impacts are there already. These are representative images from Central Ladakh from ‘69, ‘79, ’89; they show the cover of snow and, in fact, glacier ice. The reason why that’s important is that during the dry season something like 80% of the flow of the rivers of the great north Indian plain, the Indus, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, about eighty per cent of that dry season flow comes from snow and melting glaciers. Already in the last fifteen years we’ve seen dramatic reductions in dry season flow. Calculations by glaciologists now suggest that by 2050 most of the Himalayan glaciers will have gone and the impact on dry season flow of those great rivers will be dramatic in the extreme. They could be reduced between twenty and thirty per cent of their current dry season flow with devastating impacts on agriculture in both India and Pakistan and indeed, in Western China.
In his Oct 29, 2009 presentation, Boulton said that the 2050 forecast was for a 60-70% reduction in dry season flow of Ganges. A dig-here.
Climate Audit 
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I think the answer to the discrepancy is that a word was missed in the transcription of the first speech. I think he said, or meant to say, that the dry season flows “… could be reduced to between twenty and thirty % of their current dry season flow….” Now I think he’s wrong there, but that sort of typo would make the two presentations compatable.
…well, I DO agree with his presentation slide entitled “The Failures Of Kyoto”!
As a consultant who worked with two of the leading aggregators in 2004-5, I saw why the whole thing is a mess.
How can this statement from Mr. Boulton, regarding the impact of the potential loss of the Himalayan glaciers, be correct:
“the impact on dry season flow of those great rivers will be dramatic in the extreme”.
As noted in a comment on the earlier post regarding Boulton (by Charlie A), the question of how much of the waterflow for the Ganges, Brahmaputra & Indus comes from melting glaciers is difficult to track down. One would expect that the majority of the flow would occur during the summer months; but that is also the wet season in India (wet season generally runs from June – October). Presumably, they aren’t dependent (or as dependent) on the glacier melt during this period; in any event, Boulton expressly links the problem to the “dry season”.
So, how much would the glaciers currently be melting during the winter months (which constitute the dry season)? If they are not melting during the dry season, how can the rivers in question be dependent on the (melting) glaciers for waterflow? This just does not add up.
Slightly O/T, but while we’re back on glaciers, I also have to ask a question about the numbers used in WGII’s ch. 10. In the first paragraph of s. 10.6.2 (just before they famously declared that the glaciers would all be gone – or would be reduced by 80% – by 2035), they claimed:
“Himalayan glaciers cover about three million hectares or 17% of the mountain area as compared to 2.2% in the Swiss Alps”.
The figure they’ve given for glacier extent in the Himalayas is 30,000 sq km. The total area of the Himalayas, however, is generally considered to be in excess of 600,000 sq km. (see, for example, (http://library.thinkquest.org/10131/start.shtml), which would put the glacier extent at about 5%. (I would note that none of the “facts” in that first paragraph, which also contains an obvious error regarding the percentage that the population of the Gangetic plains represents for the “region”, are supported by references.)
Any thoughts on this…?
Regarding Boulton’s alarmism about the impact of the glaciers melting, I found an interesting article that looks at this concern (and, as an added bonus, at the IPCC’s 2035 prediction).
It is an opinion pieced that showed up in CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 95, NO. 8, 25 OCTOBER 2008, p 1012ff (well before the MSM caught on about the 2035 date). It was written by Sharad K. Jain of the National Institute of Hydrology in India. In this article (http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/oct252008/1012.pdf), he notes (at p. 1013):
“The Ganga is not totally dependent on glaciers for its water, even in the headwaters region. Most of its catchment area in India is rain-fed. Only about 7% of the basin up to Devprayag is glacier-fed.
Snow and glacier melt contribute only 29% to the annual flow at Devprayag; the rest is from rainwater. At Devprayag, the average annual flow2 is about 22,000 MCM (million cubic metres). This means that the average snow + glacier contribution at Devprayag is about 6380 MCM. Of course, the percentage of snow and glacier- fed area progressively reduces as one moves downstream, and so does the
contribution. More than 70% of the flow at Haridwar is due to rainfall and the river has significant amount of baseflow downstream
of Haridwar. Hence the possibility of the Ganga becoming a seasonal river downstream of Haridwar in the near future is low.”
More famously, perhaps, he also observes that it is impossible for the IPCC’s 2035 prediction regarding the Himalayan glaciers to be correct – and this in a piece published in October 2008:
“Assuming the recession rate of Gangotri glacier to be 40 m/yr, simple computations show that a glacier of 30 km length will take about 700 years to completely melt away. After considering nonlinearities and to make a conservative estimate, the time-span could be assumed to be hundreds of years. Further, there will be years of heavy snowfall in between which will extend the life of the
glaciers. Thus the prediction that the Gangotri glacier system would become extinct by 2035 is [unduly?] alarming. Undoubtedly, the glaciers are retreating, but not at a catastrophic rate and they are not going to disappear in the near future.”
Yes, I’ve seen reports similar to Ian’s that the amount of the flow coming glacial melt is around 2%, and of course what doesn’t fall as snow would likely fall as rain. It looks an awful lot to me that the 80% of the flow statements are pure josh. Anyone making such public pronouncements that cannot be at least reasonably explained surely has absolutely no place on any investigation, they’re simply not trustworthy in this regard.
Not only does Boulton have a close relationship to the institution and personnel under investigation, but he is party to dispute.
Although the Muir’s Enquiry is limited to its manifestation in the CRU the issue under investigation, whether some scientists have abandoned dispassionate presentation of the science in favour of advocacy, afflicts climate science generally. Any criticism of those at CRU would be a criticism of those climate scientist generally who have promoted advocacy ahead of science.
Prof Boulton’s performance in regard to ClimateGate gives him the appearance of being in the advocacy camp. He is an expert on Himalayan glaciers and must have known that the claims in AR4 were misleading. Not only did he not seek to correct the error, but he has used it himself campaign for action on climate change.
Having a view and campaigning in support of it not objectionable. Giving the impression that you have allowed your scruples to slip, in the same way that those at CRU are alleged to have done, makes him a party in the dispute which he is being asked to arbitrate.
Hear! Hear!
It is clear Boulton is a Global Warming policy advocate. He has a history of speaking openly about his mission. Boulton is not an independant reviewer. It speaks volumes about this review that it would be staffed by Boulton and the chap from Nature. Both are known advocates and not open-minded in the sense of mindful of multiple aspects to an issue and alert to uncertainties and errors.
Why don’t the media (other then the Scotsman – kudos to them) report on this!
The minimum flow in Ganges is in either March or April and is of the order of 500-1000 m^3s-1 (with large interannual variations). 80% of that would amount to something like 4 x 10^9 m^3 water during March and April. Thats a lot of glacier melt for that early in spring.
In summary, instead of putting him in the dock they put him in the jury.
Prof Boulton seems to have believed the Himalayan’s were going to melt by 2050 without any scientific evidence to support that belief.
The would be inconsistent with Prof Boulton’s claim that he is a skeptical scientist
skeptic-noun
1. a person who questions the validity or authenticity of something purporting to be factual.
A belief without evidence – scientific or otherwise – to support it is a prejudice, I believe.
Joe Romm, NOAA and Obama agree on the coming permanent droughts.
Romm posted this Jan 29, 2009
http://climateprogress.org/2009/01/26/noaa-climate-change-irreversible-1000-years-drought-dust-bowls/
The snow event yesterday in Dallas and flooding in L.A. a couple weeks ago prove them wrong.
I suspect them to push the frires, droughts and dust bowl meme in July when it is hot. They are getting bolder and no one calls them out.
The current snow in Dallas is proof of Global Warming!…
NOT.
I was raised in Dallas: lived there from 1971 to the summer of 78. Not only did it snow in 77 / 78, but, if memory swerves (and it does quite often) it also snowed in 74 and a little in 76. More often we would get ice-overs, where the rain would freeze. That was way cool for me and my siblings. We had moved from New York and Mom had brought our ice skates along in the move. When it iced over, our family was the only ones out on the ice the first year. Our friends eventually got skates of their own. But we were first.
At the December 2009 AWG Conference in San Francisco – Jeff Kargel from the University of Arizona presented on behalf of a number of experts on the Himalayan Glacier controversy. I was struck by their conclusion that the glaciers only contribute 1.2% of the water flow in the three principal river systems. If that is accurate or close to being accurate, would it not call into question whether the complete disappearance of the glaciers would have any significant effect on the river flows? Following is the quote, and following that the link to the full presentation.
Page 41 “9. As we have calculated, melting glaciers (specifically, negative mass balance components of the melt) contribute an estimated 1.2% (perhaps factor of 2 uncertain) of total runoff of three of the most important drainages, the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra combined. The seasonal flow regulation influences and the negative mass balance is more important in local drainages close to the glacier sources, w[h]ere glaciers can dominate the hydrology in arid regions, but on the scale of the subcontinent, glaciers are secondary players in looming hydrologic problems, which stem more from population growth and inefficiency of water resource distribution and application.”
The full presentation may be found at
Click to access 2009Dec-FallAGU-Soot-PressConference-Backgrounder-Kargel.pdf
Great find, Steve!
I note that they also critiqued a recent NASA press release as well – one which “exaggerates the roles of glaciers in providing water to people” (I found it interesting that the NASA press release referred to this study, but did not provide a link to it, or a title).
Kargel & Kaser also had problems with how the Indian government calculated glacial retreat rates in its study (which Pachauri so famously denounced), on the basis that “This is a legitimate way to calculate the maximum travel time of ice through the body of the glacier, but it gives a grossly excessive estimate of the response time of the glacier to climatic changes.”
The powerpoint presentation highlights another problem with Boulton’s claims: if the glaciers are melting rapidly away, the additional melt should be increasing – not decreasing – the water flow through the major rivers. The Kargel/Kaser presentation noted (slide 38): “Increased melting may further increase water discharge by 1-2% in next few decades”.
Yet, Boulton is tying the extant glacial loss to the following claim: “In last 30 yrs – 11% reduction in dry season flow”, when there can be absolutely no relationship between the two.
Apropos of the NASA study, study author Lau noted:
“Over areas of the Himalayas, the rate of warming is more than five times faster than warming globally”
I expect we would find that this reflects work by Mr. Hansen’s team – I wonder how many thermometers they use to measure temperatures in the Himalayas?
Hansen himself is tied in as an author of a study entitled: “Blacksoot & the survival of Tibetan Glaciers” (PNAS, 29 Dec 2009, vol. 106, no. 52 at 22114 ff), where the claim is made: “Glacial melt provides up to two-thirds of the summer flow in the Ganges and half or more of the flow in other major rivers”.
Just maybe we need more hydrologists than glaciologists on the case.
That is utterly absurd. It would imply that glacier melt is actually more important than the monsoon! In which case one wonders why weak monsoons have always meant crop failure and famine in India. Also it is very strange that glaciers are supposedly more important for Ganges, whose watershed is mostly lowland, than in Brahmaputra whose watershed is mostly in the Himalayas.
Steve quotes Kargel as “Page 41 “9. As we have calculated, melting glaciers (specifically, negative mass balance components of the melt) contribute an estimated 1.2% (perhaps factor of 2 uncertain) of total runoff of three of the most important drainages, the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra combined. …”
I think you have misinterpreted this statement. When he says that negative mass balance results in 1.2% of runoff, he is referring solely to the “fossil water” being released by melting of ancient glacial ice that is NOT matched by accretion in the glacier of recent snowfall.
There is also a component of glacial melt of ancient water that is offset by recent snowfall turning into glacial ice.
Then of course the river flow also has large components of melting snow, both non-glacial areas of the glacial basin and also from on top of the glacier.
It is often hard to figure out which specific components are being referred to with any given number, and the ratio of source of water flow of course varies as one goes further downstream from the glaciers.
“For every complex problem there is always a simple solution that is neat, plausible- and wrong
H.L. Mencken” (page 5, boulton pdf)
“I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data’ but in reality the situation is not quite so simple.”
Briffa to Mann, 9/22/99, email.
Anyone see any similarities between a) Boulton being selected to Muir’s Team, and b) Gerald North being consulted by the Penn State Inquiry Board?
This April 2006 NASA/GSFC image offers a better perspective of Western Himalaya glacial formation. If you scroll to the upper right corner and match up the Nepal/china border with Boulton’s cherry picked images, you get a better scope of what’s going on. It is hard to distinguish whether or not the three Boulton report images are within normal seasonal ablation rates. A very shoddy and misleading piece of research, IMO.
Its remarkable how it seems like every day there is unexpected news, from Dr. Pachauri writing a soft-core bodice-ripper; to wild exaggerations about Himalyan glaciers melting; and now to Dr. Boulton “investigating” climate science at UEA.
Its like an interesting soap opera, As the World Warms. Released emails usher us right into the thinking of some of the actors. Those put under pressure write emotional opinion pieces or give heart-felt interviews, to communicate their individual spins. With all the many plot lines, this soap opera is educational as well as entertaining, involving politics, beliefs, and the practice of science. Wow.
And this guy claims on his web page that himalayan glaciers are one of his research interests. Did he know the statement was false when he gave that talk?
On 30th Jan I posted this on WUWT with regard to the glacier story. It’s relevant here. The must have ALL known the melt story was untrue (and yes they did almost double the size of the glacier area in the IPCC report)
The following link… deserves another airing:
I particularly liked this:
As reported in the **peer-reviewed** Himalayan Journal of Sciences in 2005:
The Times of London (21 July 2003), reporting on an international meeting held at the University of Birmingham, noted that ‘Himalayan glaciers could vanish within 40 years because of global warming . . . 500 million people in countries like India could also be at increased risk of drought and starvation.’ Syed Hasnain is quoted as affirming that ‘the glaciers of the region [Central Indian Himalaya] could be gone by 2035’.
However, most interestingly, the above quote comes from a withering attack and exposure by Professor Jack D. Ives of the false claims being made by Hasnain about the Himalayan glaciers. Jack Ives is a foremost expert on mountains, especially the Himalayas. As Professor Emeritus, Environmental Science, University of California and Davis Honorary Research Professor, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ives is no obscure scientist, but a towering figure in the field…”
So they rejected the peer reviewed stuff and went with hearsay. Great science!
The author links to the paper, which is titled “Himalayan misconceptions and distortions: What are the facts? Himalayan Delusions: Who’s kidding who and why — Science at the service of media, politics and the development agencies.”
It’s detailed and devastating. The comments are interesting too
This paper has interesting thing to say about South Asian river flows:
http://www.the-cryosphere-discuss.net/3/443/2009/tcd-3-443-2009-print.pdf
Figure 3 says roughly the same as the Kaser San Francisco slide but it is easier to understand.
While I’m here, I might as well dump the following. It’s tangentially relevant and I’ve been trying to get rid of it for weeks. Kehrwald et al 2008 made a lot of sloppy claims about Asian glaciers (some of them mutually incompatible). This one is comparatively minor but I don’t think it has been mentioned anywhere else:
‘These glaciers seasonally release meltwater into tributaries of the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra Rivers with glacial melt contributing up to ~45% of the total river flow [World Resources Institute, 2003].’
That statement is horribly ambiguous but, whatever it means, it’s wrong. It also gives the wrong reference.
The cited WRI CD (!) had nothing to say about river-flow components. It looks like the Kehrwald claim was modified from a misreferenced table in a 2006 ICIMOD paper showing the glacial melt contributions of nine Asian rivers. (I strongly suspect it was really eight rivers, with the Brahmaputra appearing twice – once as itself and once as the Ganges – but that’s by the bye.) The WRI CD supplied the table with some basic info about population densities and basin sizes and was given as the first of four references (seven in later reprints); two of the other three (later, five of seven) references seem to have been there simply as padding; the other reference probably provided a glacial melt estimate for the Brahmaputra. So Kehrwald et al perhaps looked at the other references, couldn’t find anything resembling the figures in the table, so assumed the melt estimates must have come from the CD. Almost excusable.
Anyway, here are the estimates:
‘Glacial melt in river flow (%)’
Indus: 44.8
Brahmaputra: 12.3
Ganges (prob. Brahmaputra again): 9.1
Where did they come from? What did they mean?
They actually came from Kang et al 2000, a paper in Chinese that estimated the annual glacial contribution to various river basins *in China*. These estimates were reprinted in Xiao et al, 2003. (The table’s other unreferenced source was a 1975 book, ‘Water Resources of the World’.)
http://www.iugg.org.cn/report2003-2006/IAMAS/IAMAS_03.pdf
So Kehrwald et al used a figure that referred to the Chinese portion of the upper Indus, said that it was the upper bound of the glacial melt contribution to the ‘total river flow’ (whether separately or combined isn’t clear) in the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra (or the Indus, Brahmaputra and Brahmaputra) rivers, and gave a bogus reference. Nice!
Phew! I’m glad I’ve got that off my chest. It isn’t very important (unless Kehrwald et al or one of the NGO reports that have mangled the ICIMOD table even more – hello, Greenpeace! – appears in AR5) but it was so insanely tedious tracking it down that I didn’t want the effort to be wholly wasted.
(There is, in fact, an even more tedious paper trail that whittles Kehrwald’s ‘billion’ down to 120 million, but enough is enough.)
Thanks for that Vinny!
I’d followed the trail from the Hansen (Dec 2009) paper, to Kehrwald, and from Kehrwald to the World Resources materials, but gave up in disgust when I couldn’t determine how they’d arrived at the figure cited (that being ~45% of the total river flow in the Indus, Gangnes and Brahmaputra comes from glacial melt). I find their citation system slack in the extreme: as part of the supplemental materials, they should have to include page references showing where their information has actually come from. (I find it interesting that the Hansen paper uses Kehrwald (amongst others) for the proposition that the glaciers in the Himalayas may melt by mid-century, when Kehrwald has nothing original on that point at all, but relies instead on WGII – and uses the clearly incorrect figures stating that the glacial area would decrease from 500,000 sq km to 100,000 sq km. (p. 5 of Kehrwald paper – final paragraph) And this from experts on the Himalayas??)
P.S. The Kaser poster (not slide) is here:
http://www.marzeion.info/file/sanfrancisco2009.pdf
Apart from the boring ‘water vapour = pollution’ opening slide more typical of untrained journalists, notice how on slide 6 he disengenuously notes Mt Pinatubu for the trough but does not note el nino for 1998 peak thereby associating the warming it with agw? Very unacademic and misrepresentation. I would be unimpressed with that in a student’s work.
cheers David
I posted several references over on the skepticalscience.com blog, slightly off topic in the Amazongate thread.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-the-IPCC-and-peer-reviewed-science-say-about-Amazonian-forests.html
The best info I have found on the seasonal pattern of river flow and glacier/snow melt are figures 3 an d8 of
http://www.the-cryosphere-discuss.net/3/443/2009/tcd-3-443-2009-print.pdf a paper by Thayyee and Gergan.
It shows that there are basically 3 climatic regions in the himalayas and shows the relative contribution to river flow from snow melt, monsoon/precipitation, an glacier melt. I note that many blog posts and some peer reviewed papers conflate snow and glacier melt. Even if snow falls on bare rock rather than a glacier, it will melt in much the same manner, delivering the same amount of water to the river at roughly the same time as before.
Thayyee and Gergan don’t attempt to determine the source of water in the rivers during the low flow period, and simply call that the “base flow”, which in hydrology basically just means subsurface water flowing into the river.
Another good reference source on Himalayan Glaciers is the study funded by the UK Dept for Int’l Development, “An assessment of the impacts of deglaciation on the water resources of the Himalaya; by Gwynn Rees and David N. Collins, June 2004. aka “Sagarmatha report”
http://www.nerc-wallingford.ac.uk/ih/www/research/SAGARMATHA/volume2.pdf .
Page 44 of the report (56 of pdf) reports:
“Changes in decadal mean winter flows, observed at two selected sites, are similar to the mean flow behaviour. Winter flows of the Indus at Partab Bridge mostly peak between 5% and 10% higher than the baseline winter flow in the first decade and then reduce to around -13% of baseline by decade 10, according to both the +0.03 and +0.06 C/year incremental temperature scenarios (Figure 4.9). For the Modi Khola at Kusma (Figure 4.15), decadal mean winter flows increase gradually throughout the 100-year model run, to a maximum of over +10% versus the baseline winter flow by decade 10, according to the +0.06 C/year scenario. While the relative changes are less in winter, any variation in water availability during this traditionally dry period could have serious impacts for water users”.
Charlie:
Am looking at some of these sources and find they raise questions themselves. Rees & Collins (the DFID report) state (without any supporting reference) (at p. 13/92 of pdf; p 1 of the Introduction section):
“Nowhere is this need greater than in the Indian subcontinent, where the snow and glaciers of the Hindu Kush and Himalayas provide up to 90% of the lowland dry-season flows of the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers and their vast irrigation networks”.
This study also is an interesting trace back to the original 2035 date used in WGII. The DFID report is dated June 2004. At p. 17/92 (p. 5, s. 2.2), they state:
“Similar behaviour has been observed throughout the region, and this has led to speculation by some experts that Himalayan glaciers will disappear in the next 40 years (Down to Earth, 1999). In 1999, a report by the Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology (WGHG) of the International Commission on Snow and Ice (ICSI) stated ‘glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by 2035 is very high’.”
Hmmm…now, does that sound familiar?
As for the material you quoted from p. 44, I think that these reflect the results from their modeling runs, rather than actual measurements.
Ignoring the details for a moment and just looking at the big picture, Boulton’s statements on Himalayan glacier are troubling.
Either he claims to be an expert and is horribly misinformed, or
he does understand the science but chooses to present an alarmist view not supported by the facts.
See my article on this topic at WanderingEducators.com:
http://www.wanderingeducators.com/best/traveling/crying-himalayan-meltdown.html
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[…] Again, this claim in respect to Boulton was quickly shown to be untrue. He had strong opinions on climate change and its importance and was actively campaigning that the matter to be taken seriously. He has made numerous recent presentations on the matter – to name only a few, on Oct 29, 2009 at a Royal Society of Edinburgh program, in a RSE Policy Advice paper on Copenhagen in which he presented a supposedly “independent” hockey stick and even on the issue of Himalayan glaciers. […]