climate change is all around us now
we’ve gathered data it’s real we see it
in the record and while climate has
changed over the whole lifecycle of this
planet the changes that we’re seeing now
are very dramatic
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Everest is iconic everybody knows it’s
the highest mountain in the world the
National Geographic divers 2019
expedition is different than a lot of
expeditions I’ve been involved in
certainly the most multidisciplinary
once you get to about five thousand
meters you are above where most of the
science on the planet has been done
lakes contain layers of sediment that
have accumulated in the bottom it’s a
bit like a tape recorder year by year
what’s gone on in the climate what the
temperature was what the life-forms were
around so it was proposed that to add to
this climate story we go to some of the
nearby lakes and do some coring I
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started my work in Nepal in 1985 one of
the more meaningful things about coming
to Nepal has been a close collaboration
with dr. Ananta ARL Cheers there are a
lot of exciting potential to learn about
past environment to learn about
environmental activity these past events
are archived in hueco sediments be
working on getting the frame together on
the yellow boats solar project here is
to take rafts and go out on this Lake to
take a sediment core that involves
sending a plastic tube down into the
lake sediment bringing that to back up
with the sedimentary layers in it and
then doing a number of different types
of analyses looking at those old life
forms and looking at the sediment itself
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chorong high mountain lakes poses a
challenge for a number of reasons if you
were somewhere where you could drive to
the lake you could have a very stable
heavy-duty boat that you could car from
not an option up here in the high
mountains one of the first challenges
was to actually create that stable boat
platform make sure all the boats have
completion doubles
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the other challenge that we ran into was
that were coming in at the tail of
winter and the beginning of spring and
so every Lake except the first one all
had a bit of ice on them and lakes 4 5 &
6 were frozen solid
so here we are we’ve got the boats
pumped up ready to go
and hold those vertical in the hole
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okay yep strap
just feel like it’s going down
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turns out this lake is deeper than we
thought we were right at the limit of
our rope links on the first core so when
we pulled it up it was full of water it
didn’t it didn’t go if there’s no
sediment in it
we kind of reevaluated the situation
took another attempt at it but each try
we figured something else out got it
lowered down slowly so we could really
feel when we got on the bottom it was
like all of a sudden everything came
together
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we are very successful now we are very
happy the mod can help us to understand
the climatic fluctuation in this area
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my work with Ananta has been critical in
this whole process we’ve grown up you
seen geology in slightly different ways
we’ve brought students with us so the
students have been able to benefit from
the work that we do
he was really demanding getting these
cores out is gonna help us predict
what’s gonna happen in the food’s are
helpful first goal would be then to get
incremental analyses up through the core
and learn what we can about those years
that we’ve collected information about
water temperature life-forms that were
available co2 content within the lake
this is an amazingly exciting expedition
it will no doubt lead to many many other
studies
the Himalayas are the lifeblood for 20%
of the world’s population it determines
whether or not there will be a
successful period of agriculture it
determines whether or not there will be
extreme floods and loss of life and
infrastructure the ultimate goal of this
project is to turn the science into
something that has value for the people
by understanding how the climate is
changing we can help people that are in
those areas make adaptations that will
be sustainable for them
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