Stumped by the negation of its claims on Himalayan glaciers, the United Nations has asked its environment panel, Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to prepare a fresh report by October this year on the ground reality of the glaciers.

Glaciologist RK Ganjoo of Jammu University, whose path-breaking research that glaciers were not melting as claimed by other scientists, revealed to The Tribune today that the United Nations had asked the panel to study the issue afresh.

The decision to have a fresh stock of the situation was taken at a meeting of the United Nations panel in New Delhi on December 28-29 last year in which Ganjoo was invited. He said a decision on the state of glaciers was taken after much debate.

A London-based newspaper’s report recently rejected the claims of the United Nations’ Panel on Environment that all Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035.

Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh had tabled the report of Ganjoo and his eight-member team at the Copenhagen Climate Summit in December last year.

“The UNEP meeting unanimously felt that year 2035 should not be treated as the deadline because there was no scientific method to predict the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers,” said Ganjoo.

Their (glaciers) behaviour was erratic depending upon multiple factors, including micro-climatic conditions available to them, he added.

The rate of glaciers’ retreat in the Indian Himalayas was either negligible or there was no retreat, he said, adding that the snout of the Siachen glacier (the largest glacier in the Indian Himalayas) were being monitored for the past over five decades.

Ganjoo hoped that at the next climate summit in Mexico this year the IPCC would come out with substantive data on the Himalayan glaciers based upon extensive research work by Indian glaciologists.