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A study published in The Cryosphere on 16 June 2026 found that 12 glaciers in the Zanskar region of Ladakh both slowed and thinned between 1992 and 2023.
Average flow speed fell from about 31.1 metres a year in 1992 to about 26.2 metres a year in 2023, a decline of roughly 16 per cent.
The mean deceleration worked out to about 2.43 metres per year per decade.
Surface thinning accelerated from about 0.22 metres a year in 2000-05 to about 0.57 metres a year in 2015-20.
The slowdown is a symptom of ice loss, not of recovery: thinner ice exerts less driving stress, so it flows more slowly.
A glacier flows because gravity pulls its mass downslope. The force available to do that — the driving stress — depends on the thickness of the ice and the steepness of the bed beneath it. Thick ice presses down hard and deforms readily; thin ice presses down less and moves less. So when warming strips mass off a glacier's surface, the ice that remains has less driving stress behind it and flows more slowly. This is why a slowdown is a warning sign rather than a reassurance: it is the mechanical signature of a glacier losing mass, not of a glacier stabilising.
Simple Analogy: Honey poured thickly on a tilted plate creeps downhill quickly; a thin smear of the same honey on the same plate barely moves. The slope has not changed — the weight pushing the flow has.
The Indus and its tributaries — the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej — are heavily glacier-fed in their upper reaches, which makes Himalayan cryosphere change a water-security question, not only a climate one.
Ladakh and Lahaul-Spiti are India's cold deserts: high altitude, low precipitation, extreme diurnal temperature range. Their water budget is dominated by snow and ice rather than rainfall.
Thinning and retreat can dam meltwater behind unstable moraines, creating proglacial lakes whose sudden failure produces a GLOF — a hazard flagged repeatedly for the Indian Himalaya.
The Hindu Kush Himalaya holds the largest body of frozen freshwater outside the polar regions and is often called the Third Pole; it feeds ten major Asian river systems.
GS Paper I > Geography > Physical geography, glaciers and drainage; GS Paper III > Environment > Climate change and water resources
General Awareness > Indian Geography and Current Affairs
Consider the following pairs: Glacier : River 1. Bandarpunch : Yamuna 2. Bara Shigri : Chenab 3. Milam : Mandakini 4. Siachen : Nubra 5. Zemu : Manas Which of the pairs given above are correctly matched?
Answer: 1, 2 and 4
With reference to the water on the planet Earth, consider the following statements: 1. The amount of water in the rivers and lakes is more than the amount of groundwater. 2. The amount of water in polar ice caps and glaciers is more than the amount of groundwater. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Answer: 2 only
The gravitational force per unit area that drives a glacier downslope; it increases with ice thickness and bed slope.
The rate at which a glacier's surface elevation drops, a direct measure of mass loss.
A high-altitude arid region such as Ladakh, where low temperatures accompany very low precipitation.
The frozen component of the Earth system — glaciers, ice sheets, sea ice, snow cover and permafrost.