Climate scientists have warned that temperatures have been warming across all of Central Asia over the past 35 years
A British tourist was among a group of ten hikers that were lucky to escape a dramatic glacier collapse while out hiking in the Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan.
Footage of the avalanche taken by 27-year-old Harry Shimmin has gone viral after being uploaded to Instagram, with the minute-long clip showing the snow and ice bellowing down the mountain straight to dramatic effect.
Shimmin said he was on a 10-day hike when the terrifying incident happened.
The adventurer, who also happens to holds the Guinness World Record for the most backflips in a sky dive, said the group had reached the highest point in the trek before a couple of daring hikers split from the group to take pictures of the landscape from the edge of a cliff.
“While I was taking pictures I heard the sound of deep ice cracking behind me. This is where the video starts. I’d been there for a few minutes already so I knew there was a spot for shelter right next to me,” he wrote on the post.
Shimmin explained during the avalanche he remained on the cliff edge, but didn’t think the rubble would actually reach him.
“I left it to the last second to move, and yes I know it would have been safer moving to the shelter straight away,” he wrote.
“I’m very aware that I took a big risk. I felt in control, but regardless, when the snow started coming over and it got dark/harder to breath, I was bricking it and thought I might die.”
A new
climate assessment has found that over the past 35 years, temperatures have increased across all of Central Asia, which includes parts of China, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
In the same period, mountain regions have become hotter and wetter — which might have accelerated the retreat of some major glaciers.
Such changes threaten ecosystems and those who rely on them, says Jeffrey Dukes, an ecologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Department of Global Ecology in Stanford, California.
The findings are a “great first step” towards informing mitigation and adaptation policies, he says.
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