Ice stupas: the fascinating frozen towers fighting climate change in the Himalayas

Originally a stupa Was a stacked stone construction in the center of which were placed the relics of Buddhist religion. But Ladakh, a desert plateau administered by India, bordering Pakistan, China and Tibet, and bounded by the Kunlun Mountains to the north and the Himalayas to the south, the stupas they are ice and they perform a more earthly function: they provide water to villages for spring plantings.

In this part of the world, the climate change it is measured in a degree centigrade; the total increase in average winter temperatures that has occurred over the past four decades. This results in a less snow storage and retreat of glaciers higher in the mountains. The snows melt before spring and the glaciers more and more later. As this gap widens, agriculture becomes impossible.

In 2013, the engineer and founder of the educational and cultural movement of students of Ladakh, Sonam wangchukHe watched the ice remain frozen in the shade of a bridge in midsummer. Then he thought of a ice tower that would shade its own interior. It should be as steep as possible to reduce the area exposed to the sun. A cone would have the shape shown.

Wangchuk and his students built Ladakh’s first ice stupa in November of that year. They guided a stream of water, from a stream near the town of Leh, through a tube down the mountain, and they joined it with another upright tube connected to a nozzle that sent the water jet up. They activate the flow at night, when temperatures drop to freezing point. Gravity did the rest. Slowly, a small glacier has formed around the pipe.

This first ice tower measured six meters high and came to contain more than 151,000 liters of water. Since then, Wangchuk has been teaching the technique of ice stupas all over Ladakh and encouraging students in schools in the region to be aware of the effects of climate change on their lands. In 2019, 12 stupas were built of ice in Ladakh, two of which were over 30 meters Of height. In 2020, there were 26.

In July last year, Wangchuk’s action was reported by National Geographic. “If the size and location of a stupa is optimal, it could survive all summer and the following winter. The stupa would continue to grow, year after year ”, ventured the engineer, optimistic of power. supply the region with water from January to December, and also to generate an irrigation system that makes possible the vegetation growth on slopes mountains. The latter would neutralize the effects of summer flash floods, another of the faces of global warming in Ladakh.