Locals of Langtang and glaciologists from four glaciated countries in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region gathered in Langtang on Monday to mark the accelerating disappearance of Nepal’s Yala glacier.
Yala, which has shrunk by 66 percent and retreated 784 meters since it was first measured in the 1970s, is projected to be among the first Nepali glaciers to join the growing numbers of glaciers declared “dead” worldwide, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) said in a press release.
Over 50 people, including Buddhist monks and members of the local community, and glacier experts from Bhutan, China, India, and Nepal completed the arduous high-altitude trek to attend the “poignant” tribute event on Monday, according to ICIMOD. The event featured a Buddhist ceremony, speeches, and the unveiling of two granite memorial plaques, which will sit at the foot of where the glacier stands today.
The Yala glacier is notable not only for its rapid retreat. Because of its proximity to Kathmandu compared to other glaciated areas, it has also played a key role in advancing cryosphere research in a region known for lacking research capacity.
Around 100 people, including Afghan, Chinese, Indian, Nepali and Pakistani nationals, have trained as glaciologists on Yala since ICIMOD started running training field visits to the site in 2011, and the glacier has served as a research site for 50 years, the press release said.
Yala is one of just seven glaciers in the entire 3,500km-long arc of the Hindu Kush Himalaya region 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 9 trillion tonnes of ice since records began in 1975 – the equivalent of a 2.72-meter thick block of ice the size of India – and at current melting rates, many glaciers worldwide will not survive the 21st century, ICIMOD said in the press release.
The stones left at the base of the glacier carry messages by two world-famous authors, Manjushree Thapa and Andri Snaer Magnason, in English, Nepali and locally spoken Tibetan. Both authors have also backed ICIMOD’s #SaveOurSnow campaign and asked for their author fees to be donated to local climate action.
Thapa’s inscription states: “Yala, where the gods dream high in the mountains, where the cold is divine. Dream of life in rock, sediment, and snow, in the pulverizing of ice and earth, in meltwater pools the colour of sky. Dream. Dream of a glacier and the civilizations downstream. Entire ecosystems: our own sustenance. The cosmos. And all that we know and all that we love.”
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]”
Yala is the first glacier in Asia and the third glacier worldwide to carry a version of these words by Magnason. 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.
The tribute to Yala was organized by ICIMOD, in collaboration with local authority partners, including Gosaikunda Rural Municipality Ward No. 4.
“Yala’s accelerating disappearance is totemic of the disastrous deglaciation and loss of snowpack we’re now seeing unfold across Earth’s mountains at a pace that far outstrips scientists’ worst-case scenarios,” said Pema Gyamtsho, director general of ICIMOD.
“It’s vital that business and political leaders worldwide understand that this region’s future prosperity and security – our food production, our water supplies, our industries, our energy, and our national security – are intimately bound up in the preservation of glaciers. Our common future is absolutely contingent on greater regional cooperation to manage these shared resources, and rapid emissions reductions and the acceleration of the transition to clean energy to limit glacier losses,” he added.
Shyam Saran, former foreign secretary and special envoy for and chief negotiator on climate change for India, 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 centers, we know this water is set to decline from mid-century – just 25 years from now. This has major implications for this region.
“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 recognize our interconnectedness with the ecological systems that support us, and act together, for our common future, now.”
Sharad Prasad Joshi, a cryosphere analyst at ICIMOD and Nepal’s national correspondent for the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS), has visited the Yala glacier more than 25 times since 2011.
Speaking on the eve of the event, Joshi said, “Yala is representative. This issue is not just about glaciers in Nepal. This is happening across the Hindu Kush Himalaya, and the world. We are losing our glaciers. Yala represents the true casualties – all glaciers in Nepal are now receding – of global warming.”
“My hope is that by doing this event, now, before the glacier is gone, we will give glacier losses more prominence. There’s still not enough awareness. Personally and professionally, it feels incredibly important to make the sorts of dramatic losses we’re seeing in Yala visible – we felt like we needed to show people the reality. It feels like no one’s paying sufficient attention to this issue and it is so consequential,” he said.
“I’m hoping we’re able to make more people aware, and to share what I learned and experienced from Yala, from monitoring this glacier, especially for those who cannot come here and see this for themselves, and to show them that this glacier and the world’s glaciers are our lifelines.”
ICIMOD’s glacier monitoring is supported by the Norway government and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.
