Three years ago, a grim warning from the panel of scientists advising the United Nations on climate change caught the attention of policymakers in Asia.
In one of several long reports, the panel said that glaciers in the Himalayan mountain chain between India and China were "receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate."
Himalayan glaciers — slow-moving rivers of ice formed by compressed snow — cover about 3 million hectares or 17 percent of the mountain area. As the largest body of ice outside the polar caps, they store about 12,000 cubic km, releasing it through spring and summer meltwater into South Asia's major rivers, on which hundreds of millions of people depend.