He has stopped snowing in the Himalayas.
As a result, the water supply to two billion people is threatened.
The mountain range reaches 2500 km from Afghanistan in the west to Myanmar in the east.
His high spikes and valleys are covered with ice, or they should be.
The Annual Derretted Snow Cycle feeds 12 main river basins that make their way through the landscape of Central and Eastern Asia.
These are the main water sources for the nations of the boxes, but the measurements have revealed a constant decrease in snow that falls on the Himalayas in recent decades.
This season, it fell to a general minimum of 23 years.
“This is an alarm trend,” says the scientist of the International Mountain Development Center (ICIMOD) Sher Muhammad.
“We are observing such deficit situations that occur in the continuous succession.”
Some rivers suffer more than others.
The HKH Snow Update 2025 report reveals the snow basins for the Mekong and Salwen rivers that feed on Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia are worse than 50 percent lower than the average.
China’s Yangtze basin has 26 percent less snow. The Ganges river of India and Bangladesh fell 24 percent.
As is the Indo that feeds Cashmira and Pakistan.
Reduced snowfall would not be a problem if it were a unique event, but the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) says this has happened in five of the last six years.
It is an acceleration of a trend observed in the last quarter of a century and the implications of this trend are huge.
“Australian policy formulators greatly underestimate how climate change will interrupt national security and regional stability throughout the Indo-Pacific,” warns the Australian strategic policy analyst (ASPI) Mike Copage.
Drying
Less snow in the Himalayas means less spring melting and less ice insulation or glaciers underneath.
Less spring melting means less water flow and that, in turn, means less soaking to fill ground water basins.
The snow is not the only water source for the main rivers of the Himalayas. While each river differs, snow, on average, contributes to approximately a quarter or the entire annual water runoff.
But researchers say there is no doubt that the ongoing snow deficits are contributing to changing flow patterns and the fall in water levels.
“(This means) water stress of early summer, especially for the downstream communities, which already wobbles under premature and intense heat spells throughout the region,” says ICimod.
The Yellow River basin of China is an example.
Its persistence of snow (how long the snow remains on the ground) fell from 98 percent above the average in 2008 to -54 percent in 2023.
“The basin continues to face deficits (although at -18.6% in 2025),” says the report.
“Such sustained deficits tense agriculture, hydroelectric energy and water availability.”
It is a similar story for the Yangtze basin of China.
This year’s snowfall disappeared by 26 percent faster than average.
“The snow layer constantly decreased the snow layer endangers the hydroelectric efficiency of the three Gorges dam,” the report warns.
It is a similar story for all hydroelectric projects fed with the Himalayas and agricultural regions.
The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) urges Asian nations to take imcedational measures.
And spending billions in improved water management systems, a stronger drought preparation, better early alert systems and greater regional cooperation is only the first step.
“Carbon emissions have already locked up in an irreversible course of recurring snow abnormalities in (Himalayas),” warns Icimod’s general director, Pema Gyamtsho.
“We urgently need to adopt a paradigm shift towards science -based policies and vision of the future and promote renewed regional cooperation for cross -border water mitigation and emissions.”
But experience is not exclusive to Asia.
The Aral Sea between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan has been reduced to a fraction of its original size in recent decades.
The Sea of Russia, the largest lake in the world, is in Rapid Retreat and Lake Chad in the center of West Africa has evaporated up to 90 percent. ‘
Worse to come
The vast snow and rain basins of the Himalayas are subject to several climatic influences.
Previously, the most predictable climatic patterns sacrifice little hope for improvement in the water supplies of Southeast Asia.
This year’s girl’s climate pattern disappeared after just a few months.
This is the cold phase of the southern oscillation cycle of El Niño, a natural temperature exchange observed in the long term through the Pacific Ocean.
A warm the boy usually changes the girl every two or seven years.
The girl had to replace the last the boy in mid -2014. He did not arrive until December.
Now, the Oceanic and Atmospheric National Administration of the United States (NOAA) reports that it evaporated in March.
“After a few months of the girl’s conditions, the tropical Pacific is now neutral, and the forecasters expect Neutral to continue through the summer of the northern hemisphere (Australian winter),” says Miami Emily Becker University.
Historical, the girl is associated with incessal rains in Southeast Asia and Indochina.
A neutral Enso phase generally brings much less predictable climate, notices NOAA.
“El Niño’s events can include drought and extreme heat, while the girl’s events can include extreme rains and severe floods,” says a report from the Perth use center.
“It is predicted that only 1.5 ° C of global warming will double the frequency of the extreme events of El Niño and magnify the variability of the rain of the El Niño – La Niña meteorological cycle.”
Asia is suffering more from global climate change, observes the UN World Meteorological Organization.
Successive droughts have produced a particularly high or harmful heat number.
These have one leg topped by destructive storms and floods and is becoming a relentless trend.
The Asian Development Bank has predicted that Indonesian rice yields to Vietnam will fall by 50 percent in 2100 without urgent and expensive climatic adaptation measures.
“While the physical impacts of climate change are already intense, the most worrying results worldwide will arise from social, economic and political interruptions, which is much more difficult to predict or manage that isolated disaster events.
“Given an already unstable global context of the increase in geopolitical tensions, climatic impacts will only magnify this volatility.”
