New Delhi: Glaciologists and local communities mourned the loss of Nepal’s Yala glacier, believed to be the first Nepalese glacier to be declared “dead”.
Locals and glaciologists from four countries — Nepal, India, China and Bhutan — in the Hindu Kush Himalayas (HKH) gathered to mark the accelerating disappearance of Nepal’s Yala Glacier in Langtang, Nepal on Monday according to a statement by Kathmandu based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).
Yala is the first glacier in Asia and the third glacier worldwide to carry a plaque with words by author, Andri Snaer Magnason in its memory. Plaques bearing his message also sit at the site of the world’s first glacier funeral, which took place in Magnason’s native Iceland in 2019, for OK Glacier, and at the site of the funeral for Ayoloco glacier in Mexico in 2021. Funerals have also been held for the Swiss Pizol glacier in 2019, Clark glacier in Oregon in 2020, and Basodino glacier in Switzerland in 2021.
In 2021, ICIMOD, with the United Nations, marked the disappearance of Lemthang Glacier, in Bhutan, which was wiped out by a glacial lake outburst flood in 2017.
The stones left at the base of the Yala glacier carry messages by two authors, Manjushree Thapa and Andri Snaer Magnason, in English, Nepali and locally spoken Tibetan.
Magnason’s inscription reads: “A message to the future: Yala glacier is one of 54,000 glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalayas, most of which are expected to vanish this century due to global warming. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it. May 2025 426ppm CO2 [parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere].”
Thapa’s inscription reads: “Yala, where the gods dream high in the mountains, where the cold is divine. Dream of life in rock, sediment, and snow, in the pulverising of ice and earth, in meltwater pools the colour of sky. Dream. Dream of a glacier and the civilisations downstream. Entire ecosystems: our own sustenance. The cosmos. And all that we know and all that we love.”
Yala has shrunk by 66% and retreated 784m since it was first measured in the 1970s. Over 50 people, including Buddhist monks and members of local community, and glacier experts from Bhutan, China, India, and Nepal completed the arduous high-altitude trek to attend the “poignant” tribute on May 12, according to ICIMOD.
The prayer meet featured a Buddhist ceremony, speeches, and the unveiling of the two granite memorial plaques which will sit at the foot of where the glacier stands.
Yala is notable not just for its rapid retreat and for the central role it has played in advancing cryosphere research in a region that is known for lacking research capacity.
Yala is one of just seven glaciers in the entire 3,500km-long arc of the Hindu Kush Himalayas to have been monitored annually for a decade or more and it is one of 38 glaciers with in-situ measurements, providing crucial data on the speed and extent of losses.
“Earth’s mountains have lost close to nine trillion tonnes of ice since records began in 1975 — the equivalent of a 2.72-metre thick block of ice the size of India. On current melt rates, many glaciers worldwide will not survive the 21st century,” ICIMOD said.
“I’ve trekked the mountains of the Himalayas for decades. The pace and scale of the deglaciation and loss of snowpack happening now, and which I’ve seen with my own eyes, is truly breathtaking. While this thawing is currently upping the water available for Asia’s major economies and huge urban centres, we know this water is set to decline from mid-century — just 25 years from now. This has major implications for this region,” said Shyam Saran, former foreign secretary and special envoy for and chief negotiator on climate change for India who is presently in Nepal.
“Tragically, the issues that divide us today, and which are rightly commanding so much global attention right now, are set to be dwarfed by the kinds of disasters we’ll be facing if we don’t recognise our interconnectedness with the ecological systems that support us, and act together, for our common future, now,” he added.
HT reported on April 21 that snow persistence in the Ganga basin this year has been 24.1% below normal — the lowest in the past 23 years, vis-a-vis 30.2% above normal (the highest) in 2015 — which could lead to reduced flows in early summer, as per ICIMOD.
Snow persistence over the Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region has plummeted to a 23-year record low, registering a staggering 23.6% fall from the long-term average. This unprecedented level of reduced snow cover, which measures the fraction of time snow remains on the ground after snowfall, underscores a significant and growing threat to water security of nearly 2 billion people who are dependent on the HKH’s river systems, ICIMOD said, adding that the alarming statistic is compounded by the fact that 2025 marks the third consecutive year of below-normal seasonal snow across the region.
On March 21, World Meteorological Organisation said the period between 2022 and 2024 witnessed the largest three-year loss of glacier mass on record.
“This is an important glacier because it has been used as a training site and over 100 glaciologists are trained on this glacier. In terms of its importance for water, it is a small glacier so not that significant for water downstream. However, as it is melting quite rapidly. So, the field data is highlighted with unprecedented details that how climate change is affecting glaciers,” said Sher Muhammad, remote sensing Specialist at ICIMOD.