Scientists probe glacial melt deeper

BERLIN, Jan. 28 (UPI) -- Even though some Himalayan glaciers are stable despite warming climate trends, a U.N.-backed panel has determined most of them are melting away.

A three-year study of the Hindu Kush region of the Himalayas found as much as 65 -percent of the Himalayan glaciers were melting away because of the affect climate change is having on monsoon rains that feed the ice.

Climate issues came under fire when the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in January it made errors in reports saying the Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035, which the U.N. body used in its 2007 data on the affects of climate change.

Nevertheless, the United Nations has warned that glacial melt has a dramatic impact on downstream watersheds.

But Dirk Scherler, who co-wrote a glacier report while at the Institute of Earth and Environmental Science in Germany, said not all of the glaciers are responding to climate change the same way.

"Our study shows that there is no uniform response of the Himalayan glaciers to climate change," he told the United Nations' humanitarian news agency IRIN.