?? Depleted rivers and a growing mountain
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??This week ends with some concerning climate-change developments with melting glaciers and depleted rivers.?
?? To top it all, scientists have uncovered one much longer-term development – Mount Everest is growing.
?? Swiss glaciers melted at an above-average rate in 2024 as a blistering hot summer thawed through abundant snowfall, monitoring body GLAMOS said.
Overall, GLAMOS said Swiss glaciers lost 2.5% of their volume this year, which was above the average of the past decade.
"It is worrying to me that despite the perfect year we actually had for glaciers, with the snow-rich winter and the rather cool and rainy spring, it was still not enough," Matthias Huss, director of GLAMOS, said.
"If the trend continues that we have seen in this year, this will be a disaster for Swiss glaciers," he added.
??? More than half of the glaciers in the Alps are in Switzerland where temperatures are rising by around twice the global average due to climate change.
?? Speaking of rising temperatures, the Solimoes, one of the two largest tributaries of the Amazon River in Brazil, fell to its lowest level ever this week, in the worst drought on record in the Amazon region.
Villages have been left isolated, without transport on water too shallow for boats to travel on, and they are lacking food supplies and, more critically, drinking water.
?? With almost another month to go before the rains come to end the dry season, the level of the Solimoes, which flows down from the Andes in Peru, is expected to drop further in coming weeks, deepening the crisis for riverine communities.
?? And finally, Mount Everest , Earth's tallest mountain –? towering 5.5 miles (8.85 km) above sea level – is still growing.
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??? While it and the rest of the Himalayas are continuing an inexorable uplift that dates back to their birth roughly 50 million years ago when the Indian subcontinent collided with Eurasia, Everest is growing more than expected from this alone.?
?? Scientists now think they know the reason why, and it has to do with the monumental merger of two nearby river systems that took place about 89,000 years ago.
The merger of the rivers resulted in accelerated erosion that has carried off huge amounts of rock and soil, reducing the weight of the region near Everest and allowing pressure from under the Earth's mantle to push the mountain higher.?
?? That translates to an uplift rate of roughly 0.01-0.02 inches (0.2-0.5 millimeters) per year, according to the research.
What to Watch
?? Tens of thousands of North Carolina residents remained without running water six days after Hurricane Helene slammed into Florida and carved a destructive path through much of the US Southeast. Click here to learn more.
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ESG Spotlight
?? Today’s spotlight shines a light on a small business owner, Loyiso Manga, who is seeking to join the small cohort of South Africa’s Black olive oil producers who are trying to obtain investment.
?? He struggled to buy a farm because he could not secure funding, but eventually found a partner that supplies him with olive oil that he blends into his own signature product.
Manga's brand has started to take off, with bottles of his olive oil stocked by upmarket South African retailer Woolworths.
He wants to see more support from the government so he can grow his business into one that will last for generations.
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