Stitching 30 Years of Photos Reveals 'Shocking' Truth: An 'Unprecedented Disaster' Created by Humanity

Around a glacier at an altitude of 5,000 meters southeast of Mount Everest, where there were only a few small puddles in 1956.

When 30 years of satellite imagery from 1989 onward were stitched together, the glacial lake was found to have grown progressively larger, doubling in area.

This occurred as rising temperatures caused the eastern glacier to collapse and the ice at the bottom of the lake to melt.

Based on 1962, the area expanded 45-fold over 50 years, and as of 2014, the maximum depth was confirmed to be 150 meters, equivalent to a 50-story apartment building.

In Asian mountain regions, there are about 95,000 glaciers comparable in size to the entire territory of South Korea, along with some 25,000 lakes formed by their melting.

The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development predicts that if global warming continues, up to 75% of the glaciers in this region could melt by 2100.

[Nie Yong / Researcher, Chinese Academy of Sciences: Over the past decades, glacial lakes have rapidly expanded in the Himalayan region along China's southern border. Observations show that the area of glacial lakes is increasing by about 1% every year.]

An American geologist who studied glaciers in Nepal also warned in a New York Times opinion piece that glaciers along the border between China and Nepal have already collapsed dozens of times since 1900, calling massive glacial lakes a "ticking time bomb."

[Felipe Ugalde / Geologist, University of Chile: It is always better to prevent disasters beforehand than to respond after they happen. However, preventing threats from glaciers is not simple. Additional research is needed, and glacier instability must be monitored.]

The scientific community urges countries around the world to join forces to study glacier conditions and build early warning capabilities.

Reported by Jung Ban-seok | Produced by Lee Se-young | Video by Jung Yong-hwa | Graphics by Kang Yoon-jung | Produced by SBS Digital News
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.