Daily Science Dose

Actually, no. In the case of the Tibetan glaciers, no radioactive isotopes in ice cores is a bad thing. The radioactive particles were a good way to date ice cores — in that radioactive particles are useful in rather accurate dating methods, and also that these particular

radioactive isotopes were from a definite point in time and if the isotopes are not there, it may just mean that ice has not been accumulating on many of the Himalayan glaciers for quite some time now.

Science Daily ran a story about a joint US-China research team that studies ice cores, and in particular four ice cores drilled in 2006 from the Naimona’nyi glacier about 19,000 feet up in the Tibetan plateau. Seems that in years past, core from different glaciers around the world, radioactive isotopes are always around in the area of the ice that accumulated in the 1950’s and 1960’s — The Nuclear Age.

From Science Daily:

The Beta radioactivity signals – from strontium90, cesium136, tritium (hydrogen3) and chlorine36 – are the remnants of radioactive fallout from the 1950s-60s atomic tests. They are “present in ice cores retrieved from both polar regions and from tropical glaciers around the globe and they suggest that those ice fields have retained snow (mass) that fell during the last 50 years,” he [Lonnie Thompson, distinguished university professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University and a researcher with the Byrd Polar Research Center] said.

“In ice cores drilled in 2000 from Kilimanjaro’s northern ice field (5890 meters high), the radioactive fallout from the 1950s atomic test was found only 1.8 meters below the surface.

“By 2006 the surface of that ice field had lost more than 2.5 meters of solid ice (and hence recorded time) – including ice containing that signal. Had we drilled those cores in 2006 rather than 2000, the radioactive horizon would be absent – like it is now on Naimona’nyi in the Himalayas,” he said.

Yeah, this may not be a good sign. And is is only me or is anyone else worried about where all that cesium-136 and strontium-90 has ended up?

But as the researchers worry, as well as many a climatologist, if the Himalayan ice cap, known as the Third Pole, is not accumulating ice or retaining some top-side ice at least, 500 million people are royally screwed. The Himalayan ice fields are a huge source of fresh water, a reservoir that ensures the survival of the people of the Indian sub-continent in addition to China and Southeast Asia.

Water wars, people, it will happen, and sooner than we think.

natural resources, water, China, US, glaciers, ice, third pole, Asia, Tibetan Plateau, Himalayas, radioactivity, radioactive isotopes, strontium, cesium, nuclear testing, nuclear age, war