GÉANT and CAREN tracking Kyrgyzstan’s melting glaciers

The challenge

Climate change is having a major impact on Central Asia with retreating glaciers leading to large scale flooding, avalanches and mudslides, often with disastrous results.  The challenge is to enable international monitoring of melting glaciers and provide early warning of potential flooding.

The solutions

Understanding how the environment is altering through ongoing monitoring is key to coping with the effects of climate change.
International collaborative research generates large amounts of data which needs to be shared, often in short timescales from remote locations. Consequently, the fight to mitigate climate change relies on high-speed research networks, such as GÉANT (in Europe) and CAREN (in Central Asia) to underpin these vital activities.

Key Benefits

Working with European partners, the Central Asian Institute of Applied Geosciences (CAIAG) in Kyrgyzstan is now able to monitor melting glaciers and mitigate the risks to the local population.

​ “Research networks are central to all of our work at CAIAG. Thanks to GÉANT and CAREN we can quickly share information with our European partners, speeding up the processing of monitoring data and enabling us to work together to predict the impact of climate change and protect our local environment.” Dr Bolot Moldobekov, Co-Director of Central Asian Institute of Applied Geosciences (CAIAG).