Flies invade Everest base camp – a sign of climate change?
Sticking with the natural kingdom theme, if you need more evidence that something is going on with the global climate then you might have to look no further than Everest base camp. Base camp sits at around 17,500 feet elevation, which has in the past been too high, cold, and inhospitable to be within the normal range of the dratted housefly. However, they are now turning up even there. Now either this is a sign of a climatic change as the locals allege, or houseflies are evolving in a whole new scary direction.
Sphere: Related Content“It’s happened twice this year – the Himalayas are warming up and changing fast,” says Dawa, who only took up climbing seriously in 2006, but in a few years has climbed Everest twice as well as two 8,000m peaks in Tibet.
“What I do is climb. It’s a family business. And what we see is the Himalayan glaciers melting. It’s not a seasonal thing any more. It’s rapid. It’s so apparent.
“Look at the walls and slopes of the Khumbu glacier [which flows 1.5 miles down from an icefall on the southern flanks of Everest]. “You can see a clear line where the black rock becomes white. That’s where it’s been exposed to the sun. That means metres of thick ice have melted in just a few decades,” he says.
Dawa was born in Khumjung, a village just 12 miles from Everest which lies at 3,500m above sea level. His father used to climb with British mountaineer Chris Bonnington, and his grandfather, a yak traderwho toured the world with Everest’s first summiteer, Sir Edmund Hillary.
All three generations of Dawa’s family testify to major climate change taking place today. “Grandfather used to take yaks to a place called Gokio which was on the other side of the Ngozumba glacier, Nepal’s longest. He could walk them over the ice but now it’s just not there – it’s a stony wasteland. The whole thing has melted,” he says.
He lists some of the physical changes he has seen and their effects on local communities. “The permanent ice above our village now melts at about 5,500m, but it used to be 3,750 metres. Our village is seeing prolonged droughts. They used to last a few months. Now we can go seven months without rain. We have less water now and erratic weather patterns.
“The young girls must now walk two hours to fetch water.
Himalayan sherpas bugged by the sight of house flies at 5,000m | Environment | guardian.co.uk
