Lakes are forming on top of Mount Everest’s glaciers

The moment Duncan Quincey arrived at the base of Khumbu Glacier, the massive river of ice draped across Mount Everest’s western side, a pang went through him.

“I looked over the edge and thought, ‘Wow, these changes are huge,'” he said in an interview with The Washington Post.

Even now, speaking from the warmth of his office at the University of Leeds, he can still see the marks in the rock where ice has dropped away, like the ring of grime around a bathtub left by draining water. He can visualize the glacier’s shifting proportions. And he can recall the lakes that have formed on the surface of the ice, vast pools of meltwater where he once only saw puddles.