One guy in India is acquire on the prodigious force of climate change using little more than ingenuity and a few pipes .
Sonam Wangchuk , a mechanically skillful applied scientist , is help Fannie Merritt Farmer around the wintry desert Himalayan highlands of Ladakh in north India by create unreal glaciers . It sounds gaga butthe Ice Stupa Projectis delivering results and has even catch Wangchukwin a Rolex Award for Enterprisein 2016 .
antecedently , local anesthetic relied on melting snowfall and glacial ice from the surrounding mountains to irrigate their land . This high - altitude area is a cold desert , with temperatures in winter send away to -30 ° C ( -22 ° F ) , and an average annual rain and snow of only 10 centimeters ( four inch ) . This scarce weewee was efficaciously “ put in ” in the mountains ' glacier .
However , rising temperature from climate alteration have reduced the amount of melt water during the other fountain , a time all-important for agriculture .
The artificial glaciers are formed by piping mountain stream water down the passel , with no pumps or electrical energy needed , into a vertical organ pipe . This spurts out water supply like a fountain which is quickly frozen by the freezing aura temperatures . Eventually , a miniature cone cell - shaped “ mountain ” of ice rink forms . This shape helps the internal-combustion engine melt more gradually and slower , thereby supplying villages downstream with a steady supply of stream water .
" A cone is very easy to make with ice , because any dripping course forms a cone underneath – icicles are invert retinal cone , " Wangchuk toldCNN . " It has minimal expose surface area for the volume of water it hold . ”
Wangchuk test out the idea of the Ice Stupa in at the start of 2014 by creating a prototype glacier six meters ( 20 feet ) high-pitched . By mid - March , the rude ice had melted out but the Stupa remain until May 18 , even when the temperatures were reaching 30 ° C ( 86 ° F ) .
" The prototype was build in the warmest potential condition , so that if it succeeds here then it can bring home the bacon anywhere . It was build at the lowest potential EL in the whole Leh vale … and exposed to sun , " Wangchuk said on theproject ’s funding pageboy .
The idea of artificial glaciers was started by Chewang Norphel , a fellow engineer from Jammu , but it was Wangchuk who pluck it out across the area using $ 125,200 pull together througha crowdfunding campaign . This money paid for 2.3 kilometers ( 1.4 naut mi ) of piping to lineal wintry streams down to the village desert .
During the first spring , this system of rules delivered 1.5 million liters ( 330,000 Imperial gallon ) of meltwater to local villager and farms . Using his loot money from the Rolex Award , he hope to make 20 more trash stupas , each 30 beat ( 100 feet ) high .
