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Lumding Himalaya. Photos by photographer Jef Maion. www.maion.com

Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Himalayan glaciers are under threat to melt by 2035, according to a widely-read scientific report on the state of the world’s climate. This has now been revealed to be inaccurate, after news organizations, including the BBC, pointed out the error. The report was produced by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The report contains “poorly substantiated estimates of rate of recession and date for the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers”, according to the IPCC website 20 January.

The consequences for “mountain snow pack, glaciers and small ice caps” of global warming are not substantially undermined by the error in the report, IPCC says, and the error slipped in because “the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly.”

The original claim was included in the IPCC 2007 assessment report (AR4). In it, the 15,000 Himalayan glaciers were said to “be receding faster than in any other part of the world. . . and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035″. The Himalayan glaciers store 12,000 km3 of fresh water and supply water to three major river systems in South Asia.

The claim was first reported in an article in 1999 in New Scientist, which had based its findings on a telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a researcher then working at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. Hasnain has admitted that the claim was “speculation”. His original comments concerned only glaciers in the central and eastern Himalayas. In the AR4 report, it was extended to all the glaciers in the Himalayas. “It is not proper for IPCC to include references from popular magazines or newspapers,” Hasnain tells the New Scientist.

IPCC was set up by the UN Environmental Program and the World Meteorological Organization to provide science-based information on climate change that could inform policy-makers’ decisions.

Links to other sites: BBC, IPCC, The Times