HEAT WAVE: (From top)The dwindling Patsio glacier at Bhaga river basin, Himachal Pradesh; the Amarnath lingam before and after its meltdown

For Anil Kumar Kulkarni, the abrupt meltdown of the stalagmite, or the sacred lingam, in the Amarnath cave this year may not have come as a surprise. He has been studying glaciers in the youngest mountain range in the world — and seen it all coming.

No, the ice lingam has never been a subject of research for the Ahmedabad-based Space Applications Centre scientist. For that matter, nobody has so far studied this curious icy formation created by a trickle of melting water from a glacier that covers the cave. That may change soon though, as a team from Jammu University is slated to pay a visit to the shrine in Kashmir in October this year to study the naturally-formed Shiv lingam which makes an appearance for a brief period, but year after year.

Kulkarni, armed with a doctorate in glaciology from Canada’s McGill University, knows very well what rising temperature can do to a glacier. Every year, for the last two decades, he has been trekking the treacherous mountainous regions of the Himalayas, making it a point to mark out the retreating ice bodies — observation trips that come in handy when he spends the rest of the year poring over hundreds of remote sensing imageries of the Himalayan glaciers.

During his regular annual visits to the Himalayas, Kulkarni observed glaciers in the northern region smarting under heat. While many smaller glaciers — a few football fields vast — may already have disappeared from the face of the earth, the larger ones, also accumulating ice over tens of thousands of years, are merely biding their time.

When glaciers break apart into pieces, they release zillions of litres of extra water into the streams and rivers that are the lifeline of more than 600 million people of the Indo-Gangetic plains. And the melting, some experts hold, even has a direct impact on the lives of millions living hundreds of kilometres away.

For one, it affects the water that we drink. If some scientists are to be believed, it leads to scarcity in food production. Prices of apples — and of the much loved hilsa — may shoot up. And tax-payers may end up paying for the melting of glaciers.

Not everybody is worried, though. The melting, in any case, is being exaggerated, holds Manmohan Nath Koul, professor of geography at Jammu University, who would lead the team to the shrine for the study.

In fact, he believes that there is nothing unusual about the lingam melting either. Every year, the ice lingam lasts for three months, before it completely melts away. This year, the pilgrimage commenced a month later than usual, as there were 13 months in the Hindu calendar. So, pilgrims began reaching the cave shrine when the icy formation had begun its thawing process. And Koul points out that it is not every year that the lingam has a height of 12 feet. There were years when it was as small as five feet high.

But there is no dispute over the fact that the glaciers are in danger. Kulkarni’s latest study that appeared in the prestigious Current Science Journal in January this year looked at 466 glaciers in Chenab, Parbati and Baspa basins originating in the northern Himalayas. The investigation showed an overall reduction in glacial area from 2077 sq km in 1962 to 1628 sq km at present — a whopping 21 per cent reduction.

Described by the United Nations as the “water towers” of Asia, glaciers store water quite like huge tanks in the rainy season. In summer, the ice masses begin to melt, and the melted water thus released helps maintain river flows during dry periods. For instance, the Gangotri glacier in the Bhagarati basin — a key tributary of the Ganga — provides up to 70 per cent of water in Indian summers. Besides a number of Indian scientists, several international organisations such as the Inter-government Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations Environment Programme, and the World Wildlife Fund have expressed worry over the alarming depletion of glacial ice. If this continues, the Himalayan glaciers may shrink to one-fifth of their volume within a few decades, cautions a recent IPCC report.

But some scientists think the glaciers are retreating at a slower rate than before. As proof, they point to certain glaciers in the Himalayan region. Gangotri, for instance, is retreating at a rate of 6 metres per year now as compared to more than 20 metres of retreat in the eighties, says Anjani Kumar Tangri of the UP State Remote Sensing Centre in Lucknow.

“If the picture is as alarming as they portray, then all of Bengal would have been under water by now,” says Rajinder Kumar Ganjoo, who is the director of a newly-set up Advanced Centre for Glaciological Studies in Jammu University.

But if what the doomsayers say is true, Indians are in for big trouble. A few decades from now, there may be large-scale water shortages, triggering water wars not just between neighbouring states, but between nations.

Taps may run dry in many homes as the pipes that fetch water from the distant Ganga may have little or no water to pump. Dwindling crops of rice or wheat, say in India’s most fertile Gangetic belt, would mean scarcity or higher prices for grains. Your favourite apples or plums, that demand colder climes for luxuriant growth, may fail to reach the breakfast table.

And even your annual vacation in the hills may be in for trouble. Hill towns may face flash floods or landslides caused by a burst of unstable lakes created by the melting glaciers. Remember the June 2005 flood in Parechu tributary of the Sutlej river following the bursting of an artificial lake created by a landslide in Tibetan Himalaya, which washed away several bridges? Such freak flooding may also hurtle down huge rocks and boulders, posing unmanageable threat to dams built for water supply and power generation.

Even tax payers in Tamil Nadu or Gujarat, far away from the glaciers, may have to bear the brunt with development projects burning a deeper hole in their pockets. In 2005, the closing down of the 1500-MW Nathpa Jhakri hydro power in Himachal Pradesh because of floods led to a daily loss of Rs 8-9 crore. It is the tax payer who has to finally foot the bill.

Yet, even as this debate rages on, glaciers are slowly but steadily melting away. The government may have to wake up; sooner than later.