The Global Warming Crisis is threatening the water supply to more than a billion people in Asia, as shocked scientists compared declassified Cold War-era photos to modern images to determine the Himalayan Mountain range has lost a quarter of its ice.

The report published in the journal Science Advances shows that the Himalayas are losing 8 billion tons of ice every year which is not being replaced by snow, as had happened in years past;  lower level glaciers are shrinking in height by five meters annually.  The rate of melting as doubled since 2000.  And the only thing that could be causing it is man-made global warming.

"From this study, we really see the clearest picture yet of how Himalayan glaciers have changed," said Joshua Maurer of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York.  "The fact we see such a similar spatial pattern of ice loss across so many glaciers across such a large and climatically complex region suggests there needs to be some kind of overall forcing affecting all of the glaciers similarly."

In the short term, more runoff could cause more flooding in the plains below.  But more than a billion people in India, Pakistan, China, and other countries depend on glacial meltwater.

"Why does this matter?  Because when the ice runs out, some of Asia's most important rivers will lose a water supply that keeps them flowing through drought summers, just when water is at its most valuable," said Dr. Hamish Pritchard from the British Antarctic Survey who agrees with the Columbia University researchers' conclusion.  "Without mountain glaciers, droughts will be worse for millions of water-stressed people living downstream."