Glacial Ice and Precipitation at Mount Everest Are Decreasing, Study Says

The glacial thawing seen around the world has apparently reached Mount Everest, Earth's highest peak.

Researchers at the Meeting of the Americas in Cancun, Mexico, reported today that ice in the Mount Everest region has diminished by 13 percent in the last 50 years and the snowline has shifted 590 feet higher, according to a report by LiveScience.

Located in the Himalaya Mountains on the border between China and Nepal, Everest's summit is 29,029 feet above sea level.

Sudeep Thakuri, a graduate student at the University of Milan, Italy, and his colleagues tracked changes to glaciers, temperatures and precipitation at Everest and the surrounding Sagarmatha National Park and found the glaciers there have retreated an average of 1,300 feet since 1962.

Glaciers smaller than one square kilometer, the data shows, are disappearing the fastest, showing a 43 percent drop in surface area since the 1960s.

The team also found that more recently precipitation --- both snow and rain --- has decreased by 3.9 inches, while temperatures have risen 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1992.

The shrinking ice in the Himalayas has drawn significant global attention, not the least of which is because the glaciers provide water and power for roughly 1.5 billion people.

"The Himalayan glaciers and ice caps are considered a water tower for Asia since they store and supply water downstream during the dry season," said Thakuri. "Downstream populations are dependent on the melt water for agriculture, drinking, and power production."

The researchers said they suspect the glacial melting in the Everest region is due to global warming, but they have not yet established a direct connection between the two, Thakuri said in a statement.

While Everest isn't the only Himalayan peak experiencing the effects of climate change, not all of the region's glaciers are melting.

The Karakoram Mountains, for example, located along the China-India-Pakistan border, are holding steady and may even be growing, by recent observations.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Water Research Institute-Italian National Research Council are funding this research.