Climate change in the Hindu Kush Himalaya

摘要

The Hindu Kush Himalaya is the highest mountainous andplateau system in the world, sitting on most of the world'shighest peaks over 8000 m in height (Fig. 1). This regionencompasses an area of more than 4.3 million km2 and is characterized by a diversity of physiographic landscapes, climate types and bio-systems, the largest cryosphere in the world beyond the two poles, and being the source of a number of highly important large rivers including the Brahmaputra, Ganges, Indus, Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow Rivers. The HKH is populated by about 210 million people and an additional 1.3 billion people live in downstream basins of the ten large rivers originating from this region.