The first World Day for Glaciers is being observed on 21 March, with high- level events taking place all over the world. It is closely linked to World Water Day on 22 March. World Water Day 2025 has the theme ‘Glacier Preservation’, also highlighting the threat of disappearing glaciers and the urgency to include glacier preservation in the action to tackle the global water crisis.
Around 10% of the world’s land surface is currently covered by glaciers and ice sheets storing 70% of the Earth’s freshwater. Melting glaciers contribute significantly to sea level rise, threaten water supplies for billions of people, and increase the risk of natural hazards and extreme weather events such as flooding (https://earth.org/worlds-glaciers-study/). According to the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS), the cumulative glacier mass loss of global reference glaciers has been more than 30-meter water equivalent (m.w.e) since 1950. In addition, a NASA funded study reported that the world’s glaciers could lose as much as 40% of their mass balance by 2100 with 1.5 degree Celsius of global warming (Rounce et al., 2023).
In this context, ICWRGC has started a study to assess hydrologic alteration in stream flows from glaciated catchments. The ROBIN dataset of Reference Hydrometric Networks is being used for the study (Turner et al. 2025). One of the main issues in this study is the availability of long-term time series flow data from glaciated catchments outside Europe and North America, making a global assessment difficult.
Therefore, in order to address the issue of data gaps in data scarce environments, ICWRGC, together with partners are also seeking external funding for piloting a study to establish high alpine monitoring stations in monasteries in the Himalayan Region. The Himalayan Mountains and the Tibetan Plateau, often called the “Third Pole,” are warming at nearly twice the global average and some studies report that the region’s glaciers will lose 75 per cent of their volume by 2100. High alpine regions in the Himalayas however, lack the monitoring infrastructure needed to fully understand the changes and impacts. Climate, hydrological and glacier monitoring in the high alpine zone can be difficult and expensive. While there have been efforts to install automated weather monitoring stations, these efforts have not always addressed the sustainability of the systems, and they can fall into disrepair soon after being installed. Monasteries in the high alpine regions of the Himalayas could offer a unique solution to this challenge. Many are situated in or near locations that would be ideal for collecting the needed data on temperature, wind, precipitation, radiation, glacier melt, soil moisture and permafrost changes, and some are occupied year-round. These monasteries are secure, largely free from vandalism, and the lamas, monks and nuns living in these monasteries could easily be trained to maintain AWS stations on a volunteer basis.
Therefore, with new research and capacity development activities, ICWRGC is fully aligned to support the UN International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation.
References:
Rounce, D., Hock, R., Maussion, F., Hugonnet, R., Kochtitzky, W., Huss, M., Berthier, E., Brinkerhoff, D., Compagno, L., Copland, L., Farinotti, D., Menounos, B., McNabb, R. (2023). Global glacier change in the 21st century: Every increase in temperature matters. Science. doi:10.1126/science.abo1324
Turner, S., Hannaford, J., Barker, L.J., et al. (2025). Global hydrological dataset of daily streamflow data from the Reference Observatory of Basins for International hydrological climate change detection (ROBIN), 1863 – 2022. NERC EDS Environmental Information Data Centre. https://doi.org/10.5285/3b077711-f183-42f1-bac6-c892922c81f4
