The melting of Himalayan glaciers has doubled in recent decades, threatening water supplies for hundreds of millions of people across Asia, researchers say.
A study that used declassified images taken by US spy satellites suggests that melting caused by rising temperatures has accelerated dramatically since 2000. The analysis, which involved 40 years of satellite observations across India, China, Nepal and Bhutan, indicates that the glaciers have been losing the equivalent of 50cm of vertical ice each year since 2000, twice the rate of 1975 to 2000.
The glaciers are sometimes called the Earth’s third pole and may have lost as much as a quarter of their mass over the past four decades.
Some 800 million people depend on seasonal runoff from the ice for irrigation,