Highest peaks have cut no ice in past 10 years

NEW research shows the world's greatest snowcapped peaks lost no ice at all over the past 10 years.

HIMALAYAN glaciers are back on the frontline of climate change controversy, with new research showing the world's greatest snowcapped peaks lost no ice at all over the past 10 years.

Claims the Himalayan ice peaks would disappear by 2035 instead of 2350 cast doubt over the credibility of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2009 report. Now even the 2350 estimate of disappearing ice is open to question.

Research published in the scientific journal Nature showed satellite measurements of the ice peaks from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan have come to an unexpected conclusion.

While lower-altitude glaciers were melting over the past eight years, enough snow was being added to the peaks to compensate.

The research published in Nature was designed to show the contribution of melting glaciers to rising sea levels.

It concluded that between 443 billion and 629 billion tonnes of meltwater from all the world's glaciers were added to the oceans each year, enough to raise the sea level by about 1.5mm a year in addition to the 2mm a year caused by expansion of the warming ocean.

Scientists previously believed about 50 billion tonnes of meltwater were lost from the Himalayas each year and not replaced with snow, but the research shows that is not the case, with the amount of water melting into the sea being replaced with snow at higher altitudes.

The finding was described by Bristol University glaciologist Jonathan Bamber as "very unexpected". However, the scientist who led the new work, John Wahr, of the University of Colorado, told The Guardian newspaper the melting of ice caps and glaciers around the world remained a serious concern.

"People should be just as worried about the melting of the world's ice as they were before," he said.

Previously, ice melt data had been calculated by extrapolating data from a series of monitored sites. The new data show there was a bias towards easier-to-reach sites that were more prone to melting.

The new study used satellites that measure tiny changes in the Earth's gravitational pull caused by the loss of ice cover.

In 2010, the head of the IPCC was forced to apologise for including in a 2007 report the claim that there was a "very high" chance of glaciers disappearing from the Himalayas by 2035.

Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, conceded in January 2010 that "the clear and well-established standards of evidence required by the IPCC procedures were not applied properly" when the claim was included.