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Hanging tough. Gangotri glacier, source of the Ganges River, retreated a few dozen meters from 2004 to 2008—"hardly an abnormal retreat" that would have been expected from rising temperatures, states a provocative new report. CREDITS (TOP TO BOTTOM): IIT MUMBAI; ISHWAR SINGH (PROVIDED BY V. K. RAINA)

From Pallava Bagla in Science.

Are Himalayan glaciers beating a rapid retreat in the face of global warming? That would seem to be the case, according to a flurry of recent reports by BBC and other mass media. But the picture is more complex—and poses scientific puzzles, according to a review of satellite and ground measurements released by India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests earlier this week.

The report, by senior glaciologist Vijay Kumar Raina, formerly of the Geological Survey of India, seeks to correct a widely held misimpression based on measurements of a handful of glaciers: that India’s 10,000 or so Himalayan glaciers are shrinking rapidly in response to climate change. That’s not so, Raina says. Even if it were, other researchers argue that severe loss of ice mass would not entail drastic water shortages in the Indian heartland, as some fear. Both concerns were cited in the Asia chapter of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) 2007 Working Group II report, which asserted that Himalayan glaciers “are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate.”