As Glaciers Melt, Bhutan Faces Risk of 'Mountain Tsunamis' (Time.com)

By JULIEN BOUISSOU / LE MONDE / WORLDCRUNCH Julien Bouissou / Le Monde / Worldcrunch – Thu Nov 17, 5:15 am ET

Correction Appended Nov. 16, 2011

This post is in partnership with Worldcrunch, a new global-news site that translates stories of note in foreign languages into English. The article below was originally published in Le Monde.

(THIMPU) — The Kingdom of Bhutan, tucked between India and China in the foothills of the Himalaya mountain range, is paying the price for global industrialization. Climate change is causing many Himalayan glaciers to melt in increasingly unstable ways, and there are concerns about the long term viability of the ice in a warmer world.

Water flows from these melting glaciers until it breaks the natural ice dams that hold it in place. That, in turn, can result in devastating floods like the one that occurred in 1994, when a torrent of mud killed dozens of people in Bhutan and wiped out entire villages. Western scientists call this phenomenon a glacial-lake-outburst flood, or GLOF. With 24 of its 2,674 glacial lakes considered unstable, Bhutan is preparing in the coming years for even deadlier "mountain tsunamis," as the phenomenon is sometimes referred to.

Bhutan is one of the first countries in the world to make GLOF prevention a national priority. In 2005, the government received environmental-protection funds financed in part by the U.N. Development Programme. The money was earmarked in part to help Bhutan drain water from Thorthormi Glacial Lake and reinforce its natural dams. But at that high altitude, the work is difficult, dangerous and ultimately costly. (See photos of Himalayan Glaciers Under Threat.)

The air is too thin for helicopters to be of much use. Instead, a group of some 350 residents had to hike 10 days in order to set up a base camp at 5,000-m elevation. From there, volunteer students, retired soldiers and traditionally clothed villagers work knee-deep in glacial water, using the few tools they have to try to open a drain canal and build stone walls to reinforce the lake. Every year their efforts are interrupted by the arrival of winter.

"Thanks to satellite imagery, it's possible to identify the most dangerous glaciers. But it's impossible to say when or where a catastrophe will happen," says Pradeep Mool, an engineer with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, based in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Researchers take various factors into account when assessing GLOF risk: topography, the likelihood of avalanches that could cause a lake to overflow, how solid a glacial lake's natural dikes are and the volume of water the lake contains. (See more TIME environmental news in Going Green)

The causes of glacial floods are various and difficult to evaluate. And at high altitude, in extreme-climate conditions, collecting such information can be extremely dangerous. Dowchu Dukpa, an engineer with Bhutan's Ministry of the Environment, recalls how scientists struggled to measure water levels on Thorthormi Lake. "The winds were extremely strong and almost capsized [the researchers'] boat," he says.

Authorities have identified certain high-risk zones and, in an effort to save lives, prohibited construction in those areas. They now plan to set up an electronic alert system. Sensors placed in the glacial lakes will keep track of water levels. If the level quickly drops, a message will be relayed by SMS so that residents — alerted via cell phones — will know to seek shelter.

Water Woes for 750 Million?
Although these "tsunamis from above" may be the most immediate danger, they are not the only threat facing the people of Bhutan. As the Himalayan glaciers disappear, so too will the rivers on which the kingdom depends. Water, after all, is the country's most precious resource. Bhutan depends on it to irrigate its fields, which support thousands of farmers, and to feed its hydroelectric plants, which generate about 40% of the country's wealth each year. Water is to Bhutan what oil is to Kuwait. (See photos of Bhutan's new king.)

Decreasing water levels in the rivers will also have an impact on countries farther downstream, potentially affecting the entire region. Members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change calculate that the melting of the Himalayan glaciers will cause water supply problems for some 750 million people.

Even though Bhutan is hardly responsible for climate change, it nevertheless wants to be a world leader in sustainable development. Thanks to the forests that cover 82% of its territory, it is one of the few countries on the planet to absorb more greenhouse gasses that it emits. Written into the constitution, in fact, is a commitment to keep at least 60% of its territory forested.

Says Ugyen Tshewang, who directs Bhutan's national environmental commission: "We're threatened by the melting glaciers, yet we cannot exert any pressure on the industrialized countries." See pictures of the effects of global warming.

The original version of this article, first published in the French newspaper Le Monde, cited a 2007 report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which stated that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. In 2010 the IPCC retracted that report, calling it inaccurate; there is no known date by which Himalayan glaciers are expected to disappear.

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Soggy Midwest faces new summer threat: more rain (AP)

ALAN SCHER ZAGIER and DAVE KOLPACK, Associated Press Alan Scher Zagier And Dave Kolpack, Associated Press – Thu Jun 23, 3:00 pm ET

MINOT, N.D. – The reservoirs are full. The dams are open wide. The rivers have already climbed well beyond their banks. Throughout the Missouri River Valley and other parts of the upper Midwest, there's simply no place left for any more water.

That brings a new threat to the nation's water-logged midsection: more rain. In a region already struggling with historically high water, the return of heavy storms could intensify the flooding and turn a soggy summer into a tragic one for a dozen states that drain into the Missouri.

"We know what's coming down the river, and what's going to continue to come down the river," said meteorologist Wes Browning of the National Weather Service office in St. Louis. "But what we don't know with any certitude, beyond five to seven days, is the amount of rainfall. That's really going to drive this flood."

The peril began unfolding during the spring, when storms dumped an unexpectedly large amount of rain across Montana. That precipitation, combined with unusually heavy snowmelt, caused a vast volume of water to build up behind dams in the United States and Canada.

The Army Corps of Engineers and Canadian authorities have been releasing water through those dams for weeks, inundating many low-lying, mostly rural parts of Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri and North and South Dakota. Now the river valley is saturated, and the arrival of any more water could create an even larger disaster.

Many people expect to spend an anxious summer watching the skies and monitoring forecasts.

Terry Higedick, who farms 2,500 acres in central Missouri's Boone and Cole counties, has had plenty of time to prepare. He sold his excess corn and soybeans or put them in a grain elevator. His heavy equipment has been moved to higher ground.

But despite daily updates on dam releases and sophisticated forecasts, he has few reliable ways to estimate how much rain will fall over the next few months — or how high the floodwaters will rise.

"It makes it impossible to plan," he said. "We're kind of stuck in that mode."

In Minot, the danger came from the Souris River, a little-known channel that flows south from Canada without entering the Missouri River basin. On Thursday, crews worked furiously to raise earthen levees in a last-ditch effort to protect at least some neighborhoods, even as officials acknowledged they could not prevent significant damage to North Dakota's fourth-largest city.

The workers on the levee and National Guard troops were the only people to be seen in the endangered areas. As many as 10,000 residents, or about one-fourth of Minot's population, evacuated ahead of the community's worst flooding in four decades.

Thursday's effort also focused on protecting critical infrastructure, including sewer and water service. If those utilities were to be knocked out by floodwaters, more evacuations could be necessary. Parts of the city were already under several feet of water, including a trailer park near the river.

The weather service's Climate Prediction Center issued its three-month outlook for rain on June 16. Above-normal rain was anticipated over a large swath of the Great Plains covering much of the Dakotas, Iowa and Nebraska.

In the worst-case scenario, that rain would gush into the already full river system and produce widespread, near-record flooding from Kansas City to St. Louis.

A case in point: a mere 2 to 3 inches of rain last week in northern Missouri pushed the Mississippi River up 6 feet within days near Hannibal. In Minot, the Souris is expected to top a city record set in 1881 by more than 5 feet.

Flood projections in Missouri are similarly dire. In the state capital of Jefferson City, for instance, the predicted crests of 6 feet to 14 feet above flood stage would wash out roads, breach levees, close railroads, threaten power plant operations and shut down major highways. Experts can't say with certainty if water levels will rise that high, but are warning residents to be prepared.

Right now, those projections are simply "good long-range planning information," Browning said. "From this point on, it depends on what's coming out of the sky."

And the threat looms not just in the amount of rain but also its intensity. A half-inch of rain every day for a week would be far different than a severe thunderstorm that dumped 5 inches of rain in a few hours.

Browning compared the two scenarios to a homeowner watering his lawn.

"I could take two approaches. I could take out a sprinkler overnight with a nice steady, slow stream and nothing would go down the curb," he said. "Or I could do it with a fire hose in five minutes. I would get an inch of water in both cases. But the runoff into the gutter would be far more with the fire hose."

In Minot, the city already endured a major evacuation last month, when the Souris rose briefly to threatening levels. Though residents had been warned that another evacuation was possible, the river's second rise after heavy weekend rains shocked many people, including city officials.

"It's just an unprecedented amount of rainfall this spring in the whole basin," said Mark Davidson, a spokesman for the army corps in St. Paul., Minn. "We're all doing our best, but Mother Nature, she's just tough."

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Associated Press Writer Doug Glass in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

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Zagier reported from Columbia, Mo. He can be reached at http://twitter.com/azagier.

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