Millions of people drink from the water that arrives from the snow of the K2. We have just discovered pollutants in them

The K2 is the second highest peak on the planet after Everest and probably one of the most difficult and dangerous peaks to reach for climbers. It owes its name to the Karakórum mountain range, where it is located. It is located in a remote puppy area played between Pakistan and India, but its remoteness has not prevented pollution from reaching it.

And with it the risk of thaw.

Black carbon. A study by an international team of researchers has found black carbon traces in the Godwin-Austen glacier and on the surface of the K2. According to Explain the study responsible for the studythis pollutant can be an ice risk in a mountainous area that feeds a river responsible for supplying more than one billion people.

Black carbon is presented as small carbon particles as a result of the incomplete combustion of some compounds. These particles are part of the volatile compounds known as particular matter and can affect our health and the environment.

As explained by the team responsible for the study, being deposited in snow or on ice, black carbon can accelerate its melting. This may imply the loss of frozen mass, reducing the time that snow passes on the surface, they add.

Taking samples. In its study, the team collected samples of superficial snow in fields 1 and 2 of the K2 between 2018 and 2019. Sampling was also carried out along the walls of two well -excavated wells in the snow layer on the glacier.

The team performed an isotopic analysis of the snow layer to estimate when the snow began to accumulate. All this for, In the words of Nicolás González-SantacruzCo -author of the study, “Determining the moment of formation of the snow layer is essential to precisely interpret black carbon data.”

The details of the work done were published In an article In the magazine Journal of glaciology.

A seasonal snow. The analysis concluded that the snow of the glacier has a seasonal character, that is, that it accumulates between October and until the end of winter and then disappear completely between spring and summer. This fact allowed to know in detail when the different concentrations of black carbon were deposited.

Looking for the source of pollution. The team analyzed the black carbon samples also to track the origin of this pollutant. They found that the accumulated carbon during the fall of 2018 had their main origin in the North Basin of the Indo River, while in the subsequent concentrations (winter 2018 and 2019), the influence of regions such as the Middle East, Asia Central and Eastern Europe, González-Santacruz added.

The sum of several problems. We associate the thaw of glaciers and other icy areas of the world to climate change derived from high atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. However, neither thaw is the only phenomenon attributable to this change nor global warming has to be the sole responsible for the thaw.

Understanding the diversity of factors that are interconnected in the context of climate change is key to understanding the potential effects of this, both in terms of people and in what affects ecosystems.

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Image | Zacharie Grossen, CC by-SA 4.0