Artificial glaciers boost water supply in northern Pakistan

Hussainabad: In the feet of the impossible high mountains of Pakistan, the farmers who are struggling with a shortage of water from frost throughout the year have created their own snow towers.
As a result of climate change, Warmer Winters have reduced snowfall and later the seasonal snomelt that feeds the valleys of Gilgit-Baltistan, a remote area home for K2, the second largest peak in the world.
In the scardu valley, at a height of up to 2,600 meters (8,200 ft) in the shade of the Karkoram mountain range, online discovery was made to help irrigate their apple and apricot gardens.
“we discovered Artificial glacier On YouTube, “Ghulam Haider Hashmi told AFP.
He watched the video of Sonam Wangchuk, an environmental worker and an environmental worker and engineer in Indian territory, which is less than 200 kilometers away from a heavy patrol border, developing technology about 10 years ago.
The water is pipe with streams in the village, and sprayed in the air during cold temperature.
Zakir Hussain Zakir, a professor at the University of Baltistan, said, “The water should be propeled so that it freezes into the air when the temperature falls below zero, forming ice towers.”
The ice is formed in the shape of the cone that resembles the Buddhist stupas, and acts as a storage system – continuously melting in the spring when the temperature increases.
,Ice -woman,
Gilgit-Baltistan has 13,000 glaciers-more than any other country on Earth outside the polar regions.
Their beauty has made the region one of the top tourist destinations in the country-a highway transport between cherry gardens, glaciers and snow-blue lakes is still visible from tourists.
Sher Muhammad, an expert in the Hindu Kush-Himani mountain range, extends from Afghanistan to Myanmar, said that most of the water supply of the region melts in the spring, with a fraction from the annual glacial melt in summer.
“By the end of October, we were receiving heavy snowfall,” AFP told AFP. But in the last few years, it is quite drought. “
The first “snow stupa” in Gilgit-Baltistan was built in 2018.
Now, more than 20 villages make them in every winter, and “more than 16,000 residents have access to water without construction of reservoirs or tanks”, Rashid-UD-Din, Provincial Head of Glof-2, United Nations-Pakistan plan, to adapt to the effects of climate change.
Farmer Muhammad Raza told AFP that in this winter, eight stupas were built in his village Hussainabad, which stuck about 20 million liters of water in the snow.
“We are no longer a shortage of water during planting,” he said, since the open air reservoirs appeared on the slopes of the valley.
“Earlier, we had to wait for the glaciers to melt in June to get water, but the stupas saved our fields,” also said Ali Kazim, a farmer in the valley.
Harvest season multiplication
Prior to the stupas, “We planted our crops in May”, 26 -year -old Bashir Ahmed said, who grow potatoes, wheat and barley in a nearby Perry village, which has also adopted the method.
And “We had only a growing weather, whereas now we can apply two or three times a year”.
The temperature in Pakistan rose twice between 1981 and 2005 compared to the global average, putting the country into the front row of climate change effects, including water scarcity.
Its 240 million residents live in an area that is 80 percent dry or semi-dry and it depends on rivers and streams arising for more than three-fourths of its water in neighboring countries.
Glaciers are melting rapidly around Pakistan and worldwide, with some exceptions, including the Karakoram mountain range, the risk of reducing water supply in a longer period and reducing water supply.
24 -year -old Yasir Parvi said, “Climate change, neither are rich nor poor, neither urban nor rural; The whole world has become weak.”
“In our village, with snow stupas, we decided to take a chance.”