Glaciers are not just frozen mounds of ice but are repositories of history, and importantly our lifeline! But these glaciers are retreating fast due to rising temperatures triggered by increasing levels of greenhouse gases and pollution.

Likewise in the Himalayas, glaciers in Kashmir are not immune to rapid recession. Kolhai and Thajwas, which are major glaciers in Kashmir, are melting at a rapid pace. Thajiwas glaciers in central Kashmir’s Sonamarg resort has lost 95% of its ice spread since the last Ice Age. Experts describe thick cover of ice on mountains overlooking Sonamarg as “a relict of a glacier.”

A study ‘Paleo-glacial re-construction of the Thajiwas glacier in the Kashmir Himalaya’ by researchers from the University of Kashmir (KU) and the Inter-University Accelerator Centre (IUAC), New Delhi has revealed that the glacier has shrunk from 54 square kilometres during the global Last Glacial Maximum (gLGM) around 20,770 years ago, to about 2.76 square kilometres.

The researchers used cosmogenic radionuclide-Beryllium-10 exposure dating and geomorphological mapping for the study. The glacier’s ice volume declined from about 2.73 cubic Kilometres during the Ice Age to only 0.09 cubic kilometres at present. Thajwas lost nearly 64% of its area and 73% of its volume between the Last Glacial Maximum and the Neoglaciation phase around 4,200 years ago and subsequently recession accelerated rapidly. From the Neo Glaciation period to the present day, the glacier lost around........

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