(TibetanReview.net, Sep05’26) – China and Nepal may have to seriously consider curtailing or, otherwise, better managing their Mt Everest economy if they are to slow the pace of the already rapidly melting glaciers around the world’s tallest peak under the effects of global warming, according to a recent study.
On the Nepali side, the quest to conquer Mt Everest is melting the Khumbu glacier on top of which a base camp is set up every season. The study has shown that human activities here, including urination, are melting this glacier rapidly, with the ground temperature rising every year, reported wionews.com Sep 4, citing the study.
On the Tibetan side, the North Everest Base Camp is set up near the historic Rongbuk Monastery at an altitude of about 5,150 to 5,200 meters (16,900 feet) every climbing season. It is not clear whether there has been a similar study on that side of Mt Everest.
The study on the Khumbu glacier base camp, published by a group of Nepali and American scientists in the journal Regional Environmental Change, shows how this human activity is driving the glacier to melt, setting the stage for an imminent disaster, the report said.
It was stated to be a glacial lake outburst which shook the Kyirong-Rasuwa, Tibet-Nepal border port crossing with a massive flash flood on Aug 26, 2026 morning, washing away villages and marketplaces, and killing, potential, thousands of people. Information on the disaster on the Tibetan side of the border has been severely restricted or curtailed by China, with nothing available about victims and damages, but just numbers of the officially reported dead and missing, and a great deal about how the authorities are coping with the aftermath of the disaster.
The new study is stated to focus on how, along with global warming and fossil fuel consumption, human urinary discharge is also causing the glacier to melt. The higher altitude requires climbers to drink more water, in turn leading them to pee more. According to the researchers, in the 2023 season, nearly 6,766 litres of urine were produced per day.
Khim Lal Gautam and his colleagues have said that urine alone carries a lot of heat and is enough to cause considerable melting of the glacier, although it is far from being the main contributing factor.
Estimating how much ice that amount of heat could melt, the researchers have said the glacier lost 154 tons of ice in that climbing season alone. However, human urine is not the biggest factor. After exiting the body at around 37 degrees Celsius, it cools down as well. Researchers have calculated how much ice it could melt in this state. And they have noted that only a little of that heat reaches the ice, as the rest either escapes into the air or rocks.
The bigger problem has been found to be all the fuel consumption linked to the Base Camp. In the 2023 season alone, 824 cylinders of LPG, 18,935 litres of kerosene and 5,130 litres of gasoline were used for cooking, heating and electricity. It accounted for about 94 per cent of the melting caused by humans, while urine made up the other 6 per cent, the study has found.
Scientists have been warning that the Himalayas are warming faster than other regions. Ice loss nearly doubled after 2000, compared to the previous quarter, as per a 2019 study published in Science Advances. The team has said that the surface temperatures at Base Camp are increasing faster than other parts of the Khumbu Glacier, rising at about 0.28 degrees Celsius per year.
The scientists have called for better waste management and reliance on solar power.