risen 1C for winter and 5C for summer in the last thirty years.<\/a><\/p>\nLocal crops had evolved over time in conjunction with glacier-melt by May. Since time immemorial, May was when ice used to melt at the lower altitude glacier that previously supplied the water that the crops needed.<\/p>\n
But there is no longer any glacier to melt at that latitude. With the rising local temperatures, snow and rain had also declined 60 per cent in the past 50 years.<\/p>\n
That’s where necessity prompted the\u00a0 invention of glaciers.<\/p>\n
Chewang Norphel\u00a0 chose lower elevations 4,000ft lower down the valley, where the glaciers used to reach down to, but now are now too warm for large glaciers to develop.<\/p>\n
Then he selected areas on the shady side of the mountain, where small amounts of water (like from a dripping tap) still freeze in certain shaded spots. By diverting water to those areas in the shady side, a little at a time, he was able to freeze a little at a time, and gradually build up larger and larger mounds of ice.<\/p>\n
He did this by building a system of pipes with holes in them to gradually funnel water down into shaded pockets at the lower altitude. By adjusting the volume of water being sent down into the shaded region to freeze, depending on hourly temperatures, he was able to gradually freeze larger and larger areas.<\/p>\n
By building these mini-glaciers where they used to have a gigantic natural supply of ice in glaciers that melted in May, (which is when the local crops had evolved to require sowing by), he is now able to ensure that his gradually built-up glaciers melt again in the same month when farmers finish sowing their crops.<\/p>\n
Artificial glaciers created by vertical irrigation will no doubt increasingly be copied around the world, as other regions face the same catastrophe. Climate change affects some regions differently than others, making some places colder and some hotter, but on average raising global average temperatures.<\/p>\n
The civil engineer who invented the first breakthrough of artificial irrigation in our early farming days is unknown, but Mr Chewang Norphel: the Indian civil engineer who invented the artificial glacier at Ladakh, India deserves to go down in our future history.<\/p>\n
Source: Independent UK<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Artificial irrigation used to be horizontal. Diverted water has fed generations over the millennia. Now artificial irrigation needs to become vertical as well, as our glaciers recede.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":4830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[8,32],"tags":[2854,842,843,1068,1111,1113,1346,1407],"yst_prominent_words":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/Humans_Invent_Vertical_Irrigation.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4824"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4824"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=4824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}