Short Wave - The Race To Protect Millions Of People From Melting Glaciers

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

Melting glaciers are leaving behind large, unstable lakes that can cause dangerous flash floods. Millions of people downstream are threatened. In today's episode, NPR Climate Desk reporter Rebecca Hersher and producer Ryan Kellman take Short Wave co-host Emily Kwong to a community high in the mountains of Nepal where residents are on the front lines of this new climate threat, and explains how scientists are looking for solutions that can save lives around the world.Check out the full series about how melting ice affects us all: npr.org/icemelt. Reach the show by emailing [e-mail]. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. On Shortwave this week, we are talking ice. The surprising scientific connections between melting ice at the poles of our planet and people's everyday lives around the world. And today's story is all about melting glaciers. Yeah, specifically about what happens to communities after a glacier melts. You must walk as a penguin. Like this?

Yes. Why? I'm Rebecca Herscher, and that's me getting help from a trekking guide named Depeche Joshi. If you walk fast, you get more tired. Slow and steady. Yes. Okay, I can do that. Walk like a thing.

We were high in the Himalayan Mountains in Nepal near 16,000 feet, with a team from NPR's Climate Desk, including producer Ryan Kelman. Oh, my legs feel tired now for some reason. Yeah? Nicely done, you two. You're working it. Yeah, so just to paint a picture here, we're surrounded by some of the tallest mountains in the world.

It's actually not too far from Mount Everest, but we aren't climbing one of those super tall mountains. We're climbing up something called a moraine, which is basically a 1,000-foot-tall pile of boulders that have been deposited by a glacier. And we expected to see that glacier when we got to the top of the pile. But instead, there was only water. Oh, wow.

Crazy. Oh. Wait, is that like a river? Or what? It's a lake. It's a giant lake as far as the eye could see. A very, very dangerous lake. Today on the show, climate change is causing glaciers to melt rapidly,

and that's creating dangerous unstable lakes that can lead to deadly floods. Floods that threaten millions of people around the world. What will it take to protect them? We visit a place in Nepal where residents and scientists are trying. trying to find answers. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Okay, Ryan Kelman, Rebecca Herscher. We are standing next to this lake, which you said is really, really dangerous.

But I'm wondering why? Because when I think of lakes, I think of calm water. What is going on here? Right. Yeah, I get that. It helps to understand how this lake formed. So imagine you're standing where we are standing. You've just climbed up this thousand-foot pile of boulders.

you're looking at water that basically goes as far as you can see. Can you see the glacier from here? Yeah. Depeche, the trekking guide, pointed all the way to the other end of the lake. Do you see the sand? Yeah. Over there, that's the glacier. The ice is covered in sand?

Yes. Oh. The glacier looked like a dirty snowbank at the end of the winter. Have you ever seen something like that? I have, and you sound so surprised that this was the glacier. Yeah, it looked really weird. And, you know, all the water that used to be frozen in that glacial, It was sitting in front of us.

So what's happening is the water can't flow downhill because it's trapped by the pile of boulders, the moraine. The marine is like a natural dam. And so as the glacier dies, the lake grows and grows. How quickly is this happening? Because we've talked about this before on the show, that there's geologic time where big things happen really slowly. But then with climate change, it feels like things that used to happen on geologic time are happening on human time, meaning just very, very fast. Exactly. It's the speed that makes it so dangerous. So as recently as the early 1960s, this lake basically did not exist at all. It was just a collection of ponds in the middle of a field. And now it's the size of about 300 football fields, and it's still growing. That's so big. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, and all that water, it's putting pressure on the natural dam. You know, this is not Hoover Dam. It's a pile of rocks. It's very unstable. And if the water bursts through or gets so high that it comes over the top,

It can escape all at once and cause a flood. And things like that have already happened to other glacial lakes around the world. Yeah. Remember those terrible floods just last year in Pakistan? Oh, yeah. I do remember that. That was really unprecedented amounts of flooding. You saw mass displacement.

Devastation was really, really hard. Yeah, and some of that flooding was from glacial lakes that burst. Check out this BBC audio of a bridge collapsing in northern Pakistan. This bridge in the town of Hesanabad collapsed after what's known as a glacial lake outburst, released devastating amounts of water. And it took down the whole bridge. Yeah, and there have been even more disastrous examples of this.

So in 2021, a flood from a glacial lake in India, killed an estimated 200 people and destroyed an entire power plant. Glacial lakes have also caused floods in the Alps, in the Andes. In the U.S., there's a glacial lake outside Alaska's capital, Juno, that has caused flash flooding every year since 2011. So this is clearly a global problem. Rebecca and Ryan, and you're reporting, have you found any warning systems when one of these lakes is about to release its water?

Or is it just happening all around the world kind of out of the blue? You know, it depends on where you live. So in a small number of places, including in Juneau, Alaska, you will get some warning. And these are usually places where the glacier and the lake are relatively accessible. They've been studied a lot. scientists and local officials have the money and the time to set up permanent instruments that keep an eye on the lake and send warnings.

But there's literally no warning system for the vast majority of the estimated 15 million people that are threatened by glacial lake floods worldwide, including in Nepal. And that was one of the reasons we visited this part of the world, because Nepal and the Himalian Mountains in general are ground zero for dangerous glacial lakes. so there are people there figuring out how to cope with this climate problem every day. People like 74-year-old, Ang Tenzin-Shurpa. He's one of the people we met. He lives in the village of Nha, immediately downstream from that lake that we visited.

And from his farm, he can see the moraine, that pile of rocks that holds back the water. Nepal's government warns that this lake, it poses a critical risk. If the natural dam is overwhelmed and the lake, Burs, Aang's entire village will be gone. In the summer, if it rains, I can't sleep. Every sound I hear, I wonder if it's the water coming down from the lake. I wear my clothes to bed every night in case we need to run away. So our colleague, Nepali's journalist Pragutti Shahi, asked Aung if he would feel more

safe, if there was a warning system of some kind, like an alarm? Yeah, it will be helpful if you get like some early warning. before some events happened? So why is there no early warning system? Well, for a very brief period in the 1990s and early 2000s, there actually was an alarm system. And I think the story of what happened with that system is emblematic of how hard it is to protect people from these lakes.

So here's what happened. About 30 years ago, there was a flood in this valley. It wasn't from the big lake. The water came from a smaller lake next to it, created by the melting of a smaller glacier. and Talak Acharya was working as a school teacher at the time in the largest town directly downstream from that lake, a town called bedding.

The flood damaged some buildings, and it definitely made us pay attention to the lake. After that, we wrote letters to the government, to embassies, to everyone. And in their letters, Talak and his neighbors demanded that the government do something to protect them, right? Yeah. The government responded by installing alarms

that would be triggered if a flood was happening, and also by draining some of the water from the lake to reduce the danger. Did it work? Oh. It helped. If we hadn't done it, the risks from floods would be much worse. But here's the thing. Over time, Talaak says the alarms broke.

A lead government hydrologist told us it's too difficult to maintain the equipment. The area is just really remote. It's many days walked to the nearest road. Electricity just arrived in that valley for the first time. last year. And so now there are no alarms and no plans to fix them. Wow. Yeah, the infrastructure, it's so important but hard to prop up. Yeah. You know, it does sound like residents were successful, at least, in getting scientists to work with the government decades ago to do something to reduce the threat that has made a difference. Like, it sounds like the water level in the lake is lower

than it would have been without the system in place for all that time. Yeah, I would say it's a partial win. still no alarms for our friend Aung who literally sleeps with his clothes on every night in case he needs to take off. I mean, that sounds just so stressful. Being close to the lake, not being sure if it's going to burst. How are people who live in the valley

coping with this reality? What did you see when you were there? Well, I think it affects people's lives a lot. I mean, that's what we heard from folks during the week we spent there anyway. Yeah. One thing is that young people are leaving. Of course, it's not just the lake. You know, life in the mountains can be hard,

and there are more jobs in the city. But a local religious leader told us he thinks the threat of catastrophic flooding definitely helps push young people away. Yeah, and you can see that playing out. You know, villages are shrinking. There are fewer businesses. More homes are empty. Schools have closed. And the other thing that's stuck out to us is sort of more personal. You know, the threat of a flood from this lake has inserted itself into otherwise happy families. Aang has been married to his wife, Ferdiki, for 40 years. On the day we visited, 80-year-old Fertiki was turning butter in their living room. Ferdiki and Aung have seven children and nine grandchildren,

most of whom live hours away in Kathmandu. And Aang, for one, would like to join them. If I had money, I would live in Kathmandu. I think it would be better there. Okay, what does Fertiki think of that? Ferdiki has no interest in moving to the city. I don't like living in Kathmandu. It's like I like it here.

Here, the water is clean, she says. She can breathe. She's not afraid. This is her home. I have like open space. So it's good to live here. Of course, this is her husband's home, too, the only one he's ever known. But it's changing so quickly that it frightens him.

I noticed he seems more scared than his wife. Do they ever talk about it? Aung avoided that question and laughed. So that is an answer all on its own. Exactly, exactly. That's right. Yeah. And it sounds like they'll stay there near the lake in the meantime?

For now, yeah. Clearly, this is a global problem. You said there are 15 million people like Aung and Fertiki who are threatened to some extent by glacial lake flooding. So, like, what are scientists doing to help protect people? better. And is that even possible? Yeah, you know, scientists hope it's possible. You know, the big thing is just figuring out where all the lakes are and how quickly they're growing. Satellites can be really helpful with that because it saves scientists from having to

hike all the way to every lake over and over and see them in person. So using a mix of satellite data and in-person data, they are slowly figuring out which lakes are stable, which are more unstable, which weather conditions might cause a glacier to melt really fast, right? Which would lead to a flood. They're even trying to predict how earthquakes might trigger some of these lakes to flood. So this is a growing area of research, and a lot of scientists are hopeful that they'll have more useful concrete data available in the coming years. Yes. But I mean, the thing at the same time is that it's not always simple to connect that science to people's lives, right? It's not enough just to build an alarm system. You need money and people and expertise to maintain it. And

maybe even more importantly, you need to talk to the people who are living downstream. You know, you need to figure out how this is affecting their lives, asking what they need. And, you know, for example, if their farming is a threat more to their livestock or their physical safety. And then from there, you have to come up with a sustainable location-specific solution based on those answers. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. This is a powerful thing to think about when you consider how far away ice is and how much what's happening to glaciers is affecting people around the world because it just means that you can never turn your eyes away from what's happening. Even if it's not affecting you directly,

it will in the coming years. So thank you for kind of drawing these connections for us and maybe even providing a bit of a way forward through it. Thanks, Emily. Yeah, thanks. And a quick reminder, the final episode of Ice Week on shortwave will drop on Friday. And it's about the mysterious connection between ice and wildfire, and that's by my colleague reporter Lauren Summer. And you can see photos from our reporting chip to the Himalayas on NPR.org. There's the link in the show notes. This episode was produced by Margaret Serino. It was edited by managing producer Rebecca Ramirez and fact-checked by Britt Hansen.

The audio engineer was Jayses. Special thanks to Nila Bannergy, Sadie Babitz, and Passang Sherba. Brendan Crump is our podcast coordinator. Beth Donovan is our senior director. And Anya Grundman is our senior vice president of programming. I'm Ryan Kelman. I'm Rebecca Hersher. And I'm Emily Kwong.

Thank you for listening to Shorewave from NPR. See you next time.