Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren Bogobam here. Discussions about climate change tend to
Speaker 1: focus on low lying areas like coastal cities, yet people
Speaker 1: who live at higher elevations also feel its negative effects,
Speaker 1: including fresh water shortages. To help these folks get by,
Speaker 1: a Ladaki inventor named Sonam Juan Chuk has created a
Speaker 1: line of artificial glaciers called ice Stupas. They're restoring frozen
Speaker 1: water so it can be used to hydrate crops in
Speaker 1: the driest stretch of the year. Glacial melt water is
Speaker 1: a necessity for most villages in Ladak, a region of
Speaker 1: northern India. Ladak sits on the Tibetan Plateau between the
Speaker 1: Caricorum and the Himalayan mountain ranges. This elevated terrain is
Speaker 1: world famous for its ice supply. Tibetan Plateau and surrounding
Speaker 1: mountains contain more ice than any other non polar area
Speaker 1: on Earth. Much of this is stored up in glaciers,
Speaker 1: which helped feed vital Asian waterways like the Young z
Speaker 1: the Mekong and Indus Rivers. Unfortunately, those glaciers are receding
Speaker 1: because of climate change between two thousand three and the
Speaker 1: ones located near the Brahmaputroz River source lost six point
Speaker 1: nine billion cubic miles of ice. That's twenty eight point
Speaker 1: eight billion cubic kilometers. With glaciers, some seasonal melting is expected,
Speaker 1: but normally winter snowfall allows glaciers to replace the melted
Speaker 1: ice they lose during the springtime. However, across the plateau,
Speaker 1: glaciers are no longer getting enough annual snowfall to offset
Speaker 1: their lost water, and so many of them have been
Speaker 1: dwindling in size. As a cold desert lagac area sees
Speaker 1: very little ratefall, receiving an average of just two to
Speaker 1: three inches per year that's about fifty to seventy millimeters.
Speaker 1: The summer months of June through August do get a
Speaker 1: modest amount of precipitation, However, that's also when a large
Speaker 1: quantity of melted water from neighboring mountain glaciers enters the
Speaker 1: streams that La Duck depends on. A steady water flow
Speaker 1: fills the streams during the winter as well. Yet, because
Speaker 1: of the frozen ground and low air temperatures, the farmers
Speaker 1: can't grow crops during the coldest months of the year.
Speaker 1: According to wang Chuk, winter water gets under utilized. As
Speaker 1: a result, demand for milt water grows exponentially in April
Speaker 1: and May, when the life sustaining crops of wheat, buckwheat,
Speaker 1: and barley need to be sown and hydrated. But in
Speaker 1: the springtime, before the glacial water arrives in force, the
Speaker 1: streams often run dry. Climate change has worsened the problem.
Speaker 1: A twenty seventeen study found that over the past six decades,
Speaker 1: about twenty percent of the permanent ice preserves in Ladock's
Speaker 1: home state have disappeared. That translates to less milt water
Speaker 1: for the locals. Hoping to solve these water woes, a
Speaker 1: civil engineer by the name of Chiwang north Fell devised
Speaker 1: an innovative reservoir system in the nineteen eighties, and I
Speaker 1: hope I'm saying his name correctly. I couldn't find a pronunciation.
Speaker 1: Using dams and channels, nor Fell diverted large volumes of
Speaker 1: glacial water into man made lakes on the shady sides
Speaker 1: of mountains, where it froze into blocks. Come springtime, the
Speaker 1: ice would melt and be sent downhill to farms and
Speaker 1: villages by way of canal, but this ice melted too quickly,
Speaker 1: so the water tended to run out before the summer
Speaker 1: rains arrived. Wang Chuk deduced that the ice in Norfell's
Speaker 1: dams melted so fast because too much of it was
Speaker 1: exposed to direct sunlight. When Chuke figured that if he
Speaker 1: could somehow freeze the ice into a conical tower with
Speaker 1: the narrow end aimed skyward, much less surface area would
Speaker 1: be exposed. To make his frozen stalagmites, wang Chuk devised
Speaker 1: an irrigation system that's brilliant in its simplicity. The major
Speaker 1: component is a long pipeline. Most of this is buried
Speaker 1: deep underground, with one end tapping into a glacial stream
Speaker 1: or naturally occurring reservoir high in the mountains. Through the tube,
Speaker 1: the water rushes in the direction of populated areas at
Speaker 1: lower altitudes. No moving parts or electrical gizmos are needed
Speaker 1: to keep the liquid water flowing. Gravity does the trick.
Speaker 1: It also pushes the water into the final stage of
Speaker 1: its journey downhill. The pipeline connects at a sharp angle
Speaker 1: to another narrower pipe that rises out of the soil,
Speaker 1: standing vertically like a telephone pole. As the saying goes
Speaker 1: water seeks its own level. Gravity and pressure gained by
Speaker 1: flow through the narrowing pipe together naturally propel the liquids
Speaker 1: straight up that pipe until it flies out of a
Speaker 1: sprinkler on the pipes raised tip high in the air,
Speaker 1: the spray encounters atmospheric temperatures in the ballpark of negative
Speaker 1: four degrees fahrenheit that's about negative twenty celsius or lower.
Speaker 1: Before landing, it freezes solid, forming a large cone of
Speaker 1: ice around the vertical pipe. The cone's distinctive shape resembles
Speaker 1: that of a stupa, which are traditional Buddhist prayer monuments
Speaker 1: that have graced Ladoc four thousands of years. Hence, whine
Speaker 1: Chuk and his associates have taken to calling the new
Speaker 1: glacier like structures ice stupas. Laduc's ice stupas melt down
Speaker 1: in late spring, right when the need for liquid water
Speaker 1: is greatest. The prototypical stupa, erected in the winter, contained
Speaker 1: about forty thousand gallons that's about a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand liters of frozen water, and lasted until May eight.
Speaker 1: Since then, numerous others have been constructed. A single stupa
Speaker 1: has watered as many as five thousand newly planted trees.
Speaker 1: Standing at sixty feet that's eighteen meters tall, it held
Speaker 1: a breathtaking five hundred and thirty thousand gallons that's two
Speaker 1: million liters of frozen water. Others may someday exceed a
Speaker 1: hundred feet about thirty meters in height and hold two
Speaker 1: point six million gallons or ten million liters of water.
Speaker 1: Outside of India, the stupas have spread to countries like Switzerland.
Speaker 1: In twenty sixteen, win Chuk's Icy Brainchild earned him a
Speaker 1: coveted Rollings Award for Enterprise. But ice stupas are not
Speaker 1: without their critics. Win chuk in companies legal right to
Speaker 1: divert glacial melt water has been challenged by a group
Speaker 1: of La Ducky villagers. Furthermore, although the stupas are meant
Speaker 1: to help sustain human life, they won't reverse the Tibetan
Speaker 1: Plateau's worrisome climate trends. But if Homo sapiens is to
Speaker 1: survive on a changing planet, will need to reevaluate the
Speaker 1: ways we use and store water. Projects like this can
Speaker 1: kick start those conversations. Today's episode We're written by Mark
Speaker 1: Vancini and produced by Tyler playing brain Stuff is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radios How stuff Works. For more
Speaker 1: in this and lots of other conversation kickstarting topics, visit
Speaker 1: our home planet, how stuff Works dot com. And for
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