Everest revisited… yet again!

Mountaineer, photographer and filmmaker (director and leader of the Everest IMAX team) David Breashears is in the limelight again because of his “Rivers of Ice: Vanishing Glaciers of the Greater Himalaya” exhibition. Part of his Glacier Research Imaging Project (GRIP),  David and his team, will undertake “repeat photography” of the Himalayan region and the Tibetan plateau by following the footsteps of mountaineers from the past 110 years. He has meticulously reproduced photographs of the Main Rongbuk glacier north of the Everest summit after George L. Mallory (who first took it in 1921 AD) after a period of eighty six years.

David Breashears compares the Rhonbuk glacier in 2007 with a b/w photograph taken by Mallory eighty six years ago

Source: low res screen capture from e360.yale.edu [link]

The change in landscape – mainly the recession in the glaciers and the dark barren rock underneath thus exposed is stark and chilling. David’s measurements indicate a loss of 320 feet in the depth of the Main Rongbuk Glacier.

These stellar panoramas are a breed apart, as he provides interactive access to the High Definition Range Imagery (HDRI) of  West Rongbuk Glacier and Baltoro Glacier; K2. They can be panned and zoomed into interactively using a custom viewer developed by HDRlabs.

In 2008 and 2009, a similar project showcased by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) put together as part of its 25th Anniversary celebrations, documented the change in Himalayan landscapes in the Khumbu region on the Nepalese side of the summit. ICIMOD’s photo exhibition: Himalaya – Changing Landscapes , showcased work by mountain geographer Alton Byers. Fifty years after Fritz Müller and Erwin Schneider conducted intensive studies in the Everest region in the 1950s and 1960s, Alton revisited many of the sites of the original photographs and took replicates, illustrating the changes in the climatic, cultural and physical landscapes of Khumbu region.

Image courtesy: changing-landscapes.com

Source: composite made from two images made available  for press.

These images (from Breashears and ICIMOD) foretell of a future that foreshadows the Himalayan region. Melting glaciers and GLOFs so-formed, pose an imminent threat to life and infrastructure downstream all the while depleting freshwater stock that supplies water to millions of people in the subcontinent.

Exhibitions such as these inform the public at large of the impacts of climate change/anthropogenic climate change to life as we know it and provides evidence to climate change deniers.

NB: To watch a video interview of Breashears, a gallery of  images and read Breashears’s full piece on the topic, visit e360.yale.edu. Our Beaker Is Starting to Boil, op-ed column by Nicholas D. Kristof  is also time well spent reading.