Ladakh, in northern India, is essentially a high desert lying in the wind shadow of the Himalaya, where farmers, like this family threshing barley, depend on gravity-controlled irrigation from meltwater from the Hindu Kush–Himalayan glaciers to grow staple crops, vegetables, and fruit. Known as the Third Pole, the icy region contains the largest volume of freshwater outside of the polar ice sheets and is the birthplace of ten major river systems in Asia that provide food and water for 40 percent of Earth’s population. Rising temperatures combined with black soot from burning fossil fuels is now causing every glacier in the region to lose mass. Researchers estimate that 35 to 75 percent of the volume in the Third Pole’s glaciers could be lost by 2100 because of the rapid warming of the planet.
