How Could Artificial Glaciers Hydrate the Himalayas?

Farmers in the Himalayas depend on yearly snow melts to water their crops, but climate change means they're not getting enough snowfall to replenish natural glaciers. Learn how artificial glaciers are helping in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain
Stuff Lauren Bogobam here. Discussions about climate change tend to
focus on low lying areas like coastal cities, yet people
who live at higher elevations also feel its negative effects,
including fresh water shortages. To help these folks get by,

(00:22):
a Ladaki inventor named Sonam Juan Chuk has created a
line of artificial glaciers called ice Stupas. They're restoring frozen
water so it can be used to hydrate crops in
the driest stretch of the year. Glacial melt water is
a necessity for most villages in Ladak, a region of
northern India. Ladak sits on the Tibetan Plateau between the

(00:43):
Caricorum and the Himalayan mountain ranges. This elevated terrain is
world famous for its ice supply. Tibetan Plateau and surrounding
mountains contain more ice than any other non polar area
on Earth. Much of this is stored up in glaciers,
which helped feed vital Asian waterways like the Young z
the Mekong and Indus Rivers. Unfortunately, those glaciers are receding

(01:06):
because of climate change between two thousand three and the
ones located near the Brahmaputroz River source lost six point
nine billion cubic miles of ice. That's twenty eight point
eight billion cubic kilometers. With glaciers, some seasonal melting is expected,
but normally winter snowfall allows glaciers to replace the melted

(01:27):
ice they lose during the springtime. However, across the plateau,
glaciers are no longer getting enough annual snowfall to offset
their lost water, and so many of them have been
dwindling in size. As a cold desert lagac area sees
very little ratefall, receiving an average of just two to
three inches per year that's about fifty to seventy millimeters.

(01:49):
The summer months of June through August do get a
modest amount of precipitation, However, that's also when a large
quantity of melted water from neighboring mountain glaciers enters the
streams that La Duck depends on. A steady water flow
fills the streams during the winter as well. Yet, because
of the frozen ground and low air temperatures, the farmers
can't grow crops during the coldest months of the year.

(02:11):
According to wang Chuk, winter water gets under utilized. As
a result, demand for milt water grows exponentially in April
and May, when the life sustaining crops of wheat, buckwheat,
and barley need to be sown and hydrated. But in
the springtime, before the glacial water arrives in force, the
streams often run dry. Climate change has worsened the problem.

(02:33):
A twenty seventeen study found that over the past six decades,
about twenty percent of the permanent ice preserves in Ladock's
home state have disappeared. That translates to less milt water
for the locals. Hoping to solve these water woes, a
civil engineer by the name of Chiwang north Fell devised
an innovative reservoir system in the nineteen eighties, and I
hope I'm saying his name correctly. I couldn't find a pronunciation.

(02:56):
Using dams and channels, nor Fell diverted large volumes of
glacial water into man made lakes on the shady sides
of mountains, where it froze into blocks. Come springtime, the
ice would melt and be sent downhill to farms and
villages by way of canal, but this ice melted too quickly,
so the water tended to run out before the summer
rains arrived. Wang Chuk deduced that the ice in Norfell's

(03:19):
dams melted so fast because too much of it was
exposed to direct sunlight. When Chuke figured that if he
could somehow freeze the ice into a conical tower with
the narrow end aimed skyward, much less surface area would
be exposed. To make his frozen stalagmites, wang Chuk devised
an irrigation system that's brilliant in its simplicity. The major

(03:40):
component is a long pipeline. Most of this is buried
deep underground, with one end tapping into a glacial stream
or naturally occurring reservoir high in the mountains. Through the tube,
the water rushes in the direction of populated areas at
lower altitudes. No moving parts or electrical gizmos are needed
to keep the liquid water flowing. Gravity does the trick.

(04:01):
It also pushes the water into the final stage of
its journey downhill. The pipeline connects at a sharp angle
to another narrower pipe that rises out of the soil,
standing vertically like a telephone pole. As the saying goes
water seeks its own level. Gravity and pressure gained by
flow through the narrowing pipe together naturally propel the liquids

(04:24):
straight up that pipe until it flies out of a
sprinkler on the pipes raised tip high in the air,
the spray encounters atmospheric temperatures in the ballpark of negative
four degrees fahrenheit that's about negative twenty celsius or lower.
Before landing, it freezes solid, forming a large cone of
ice around the vertical pipe. The cone's distinctive shape resembles

(04:45):
that of a stupa, which are traditional Buddhist prayer monuments
that have graced Ladoc four thousands of years. Hence, whine
Chuk and his associates have taken to calling the new
glacier like structures ice stupas. Laduc's ice stupas melt down
in late spring, right when the need for liquid water
is greatest. The prototypical stupa, erected in the winter, contained

(05:06):
about forty thousand gallons that's about a hundred and fifty
thousand liters of frozen water, and lasted until May eight.
Since then, numerous others have been constructed. A single stupa
has watered as many as five thousand newly planted trees.
Standing at sixty feet that's eighteen meters tall, it held
a breathtaking five hundred and thirty thousand gallons that's two

(05:28):
million liters of frozen water. Others may someday exceed a
hundred feet about thirty meters in height and hold two
point six million gallons or ten million liters of water.
Outside of India, the stupas have spread to countries like Switzerland.
In twenty sixteen, win Chuk's Icy Brainchild earned him a
coveted Rollings Award for Enterprise. But ice stupas are not

(05:50):
without their critics. Win chuk in companies legal right to
divert glacial melt water has been challenged by a group
of La Ducky villagers. Furthermore, although the stupas are meant
to help sustain human life, they won't reverse the Tibetan
Plateau's worrisome climate trends. But if Homo sapiens is to
survive on a changing planet, will need to reevaluate the
ways we use and store water. Projects like this can

(06:13):
kick start those conversations. Today's episode We're written by Mark
Vancini and produced by Tyler playing brain Stuff is a
production of I Heart Radios How stuff Works. For more
in this and lots of other conversation kickstarting topics, visit
our home planet, how stuff Works dot com. And for
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app,

(06:35):
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