Climate Change

• Long-term change in the average weather patterns that have come to define Earth’s local, regional and
global climates.
 Frequent and intense drought.
 Increased frequency and intensity of storms and heat waves.
 Caused rising sea levels, melting of glaciers and warming of oceans.
 Directly harm flora and fauna, destroy the places they live, and wreak havoc on people’s livelihoods
and communities.

Atlas of Glacial Lakes

• Ministry of Jal Shakti -updated atlas of glacial
lakes that are part of the Ganga River basin.

• Similar inventory of glacial lakes was prepared for the Indus River basin.

• Present Ganga study – Glacial lakes were mapped
using Resourcesat-2 (RS-2) Linear Imaging Self Scanning Sensor-IV (LISS-IV) satellite data.

• Process of lake formation, location, and type of damming material – glacial lakes are identified in
nine different types & majorly grouped into four
categories.

• Bhuvan portal of National Remote Sensing Centre, ISRO.

• Create “comprehensive and systematic” glacial lake database for Ganga River basin.

Ganga River

• Ganga rises in the Gangotri glacier -Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand.

• Source -Bhagirathi.

 At Devprayag joining another hill stream Alaknanda becomes Ganga.

• Principal tributaries from right – Yamuna, the Son and the Damodar.

• Principal tributaries from left -The Ramganga, the Ghaghra, the Gomati, the Gandak, the Kosi and the
Mahananda.
• The Chambal and the Betwa -important sub- tributaries.

• River Ganga -Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and West Bengal.

• River basin -Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Haryana,
Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh and the Union Territory of Delhi.