Something unusual has happened in this monsoon season that has left locals in Uttarakhand perplexed. The Om Parvat – a Himalayan peak situated at 6,191 metres, almost twice the height of the Kedarnath shrine – has gone completely bald. When covered with snow, the mountain resembles the Sanskrit word ॐ (Om), after which it is named.
“In the past too, a portion of the mountain looked black when there was less snow but perhaps this is the first time when I am witnessing it without any snow at all,” says Harish Gunjiyal from Gunji village – the first Indian village from the India-China border, in Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand.
In the past two to three days, many locals have captured the bald mountain on camera and many of the images have gone viral. There is a debate on whether the incident is a sign of “global warming”?
Anand Sharma, a retired additional director general of the India Meteorological Department, says that global warming is a worrying phenomenon, but as there is no data available on Om Parvat, it is difficult to say what caused the “disappearance of snow” this season.
“100-year data collected between 1901 and 2001 in Uttarakhand suggests a one-degree temperature increase in the period,” said Sharma, who also heads the Indian Metrological Society (IMS). “Also there have been incidents of forest fires in the summers and that could have possibly led to the formation of carbon that could have prompted the melting of snow and this needs to be researched.”
Tourism activities have increased in the upper Himalayan region of Pithoragarh in the past year, say observers. Recently a forester, Devendra Bisht, in a report on the impact of tourism, underscored the negative effects of tourist influx on glaciers.
(With inputs from Vijay Vardan Upreti)
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