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The Hindu Kush-Himalaya (HKH) Region in the Modern Global and Climate Context: Major Weather Systems, Monsoon, Asian Brown Clouds (ABCs), Digital Data/Models and Global Linkages of Telecoupling and Teleconnection all Affecting Global Human Well-Being

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Hindu Kush-Himalaya Watersheds Downhill: Landscape Ecology and Conservation Perspectives

Abstract

The weather drives human society; but nowadays in the Anthropocene human society can drive the weather/climate too. The climate represents us with a global agglomerate of many predictors, including generic atmospheric pollution (e.g. carbon dioxide, methane, dust), the Asian Brown Cloud (ABC), cloud characteristics, volcanoes and landcover effects. Mountains and oceans play a large role for the global climate, and the Hindu Kush-Himalaya (HKH) is the major region in the world where snow and ice, glaciers are found; it makes for the third pole! Such mountains can have their own climate and often the details are not well known. That’s why many climate data and their models are not easy to interpret nor easy to forecast for the HKH region. The current global warming trend in the HKH region leaves most glaciers drying out, creating Glacier-fed Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) and resulting into wider harvest declines and failure leading to global food security conflicts. This situation is interwoven with globally coupled and tele-connected processes also affecting human well-being on an Asia and global scale. How to govern such situations in good terms is not well resolved, yet, while the global population and temperature will easily rise to unprecedented levels over the coming 100 years.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This notion has been expressed already many years ago by Czech (2012) in a book resulting from the last International Polar Year (IPY) but we still have not solved this essential problem or addressed in relevant terms! The lack of relevant action on man-made climate change remains not only a massive frustration to the global audience but it represents a tragedy of epic proportions in the universe, with all life as we know it. Who is to be hold accountable?

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. -EWHALE lab- Institute of Arctic Biology, Biology & Wildlife Department, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, USA

    Falk Huettmann

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  1. Falk Huettmann
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  1. Third Pole Conservancy, Kathmandu, Nepal

    Ganga Ram Regmi

  2. -EWHALE Lab- Institute of Arctic Biology, Biology & Wildlife Department, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, USA

    Falk Huettmann

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Huettmann, F. (2020). The Hindu Kush-Himalaya (HKH) Region in the Modern Global and Climate Context: Major Weather Systems, Monsoon, Asian Brown Clouds (ABCs), Digital Data/Models and Global Linkages of Telecoupling and Teleconnection all Affecting Global Human Well-Being. In: Regmi, G., Huettmann, F. (eds) Hindu Kush-Himalaya Watersheds Downhill: Landscape Ecology and Conservation Perspectives. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36275-1_2

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