Tuesday last brought this rather alarming and disconcerting bit of news that global warming is threatening more deadly Everest-kind of avalanches. The scare was attributed to the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). But as it turns out, it was sheer scare-mongering, and quite baseless and impetuous at that.
The ICIMOD report, Glacier Status in Nepal and Decadal Change from 1980 to 2010 Based on Landsat Data, had in fact made no such assertion or drawn any such conclusion. The report was primarily an inventory of glaciers in Nepal, and was released during a cryosphere conference held in Kathmandu last week.
A Reuters despatch had reported on Tuesday:
Mountaineering tourism in Nepal faces a threat from global warming as melting glaciers feed the risk of more deadly disasters such as the avalanche on Mount Everest that killed 16 people last month, scientists said on Tuesday.
The link between climate change and avalanches was the result of the reporter's own fertile and irresponsible imagination. The ICIMOD study did not discuss the link between climate change and increased avalanche activity. It only presented "the results of satellite-derived decadal glacier inventories for major river basins of Nepal and examined changes in glaciers between these intervals. The results indicated shrinkage in glacier area in all three decades, and an increase in the number of glaciers due to retreat and separation." But that's hardly the point.
The April 18 Everest disaster that killed 16 Nepali guides was not caused by an avalanche. The explanation comes from ICIMOD:
The word ‘avalanche’ typically refers to a mass movement of snow down a sloping surface. An avalanche requires a snowpack of sufficient depth with a weak layer, a sufficiently steep slope, and a trigger. In contrast, the April 18 tragedy on Mount Everest was the result of a different phenomenon called serac collapse. Seracs are large blocks of ice that are formed as a result of glacier fracture patterns and motion, and can fall or topple without warning. The normal climbing route on Everest between Base Camp and Camp 1 is exposed to serac hazards from the Khumbu Icefall and from both the south face of Everest and the north face of Nuptse. The risk varies from year to year depending on the state of the seracs. Changes in the frequency of either avalanches or serac falls in the Everest region have not been definitively linked to climate change.
In other words, the link between climate change and avalanche activity was established by the journalist himself. Certainly in this context. There may or may not be a link between climate change and avalanches, but that was certainly not established by this particular ICIMOD study. Therefore, the Reuters report was inaccurate and misleading. It's not difficult to understand why this link was established: the inexorable and morbid urge of a journalist to find a news peg. The story was more about the Everest tragedy, than the ICIMOD study.
For someone who often writes stories based on scientific papers and findings, I know this for certain: one needs to be prudent and cautious while writing them out. After all, it is the scientist concerned who is the expert around, and not the journalist. Since scientific reports are immersed in jargon and numbers, it is not easy to convert the findings into words that would make sense to an ordinary reader. That's where prudence comes in. And knowledge too. If you understand it, then type out the story. Or else, just forget it.
