Friday, August 8, 2008

Glaciers and river systems

The Himalayan range encompasses about 15,000 glaciers, which store about 12,000 km3 of freshwater. The 70 km long Siachen Glacier at the India-Pakistan border is the second longest glacier in the world outside the polar region. Some of the other more famous glaciers include the Gangotri and Yamunotri (Uttarakhand), Nubra, Biafo and Baltoro (Karakoram region), Zemu (Sikkim) and Khumbu glaciers (Mount Everest region).

The higher regions of the Himalayas are snowbound throughout the year in spite of their proximity to the tropics, and they form the sources for several large perennial rivers, most of which combine into two large river systems:

Glaciers near by K2 in Pakistan.


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This image shows the termini of the glaciers


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