New Delhi, May 13 -- Glaciologists and local communities mourned the loss of Nepal's Yala glacier, believed to be the first Nepalese glacier to be declared "dead". Locals and glaciologists from four countries - Nepal, India, China and Bhutan - in the Hindu Kush Himalayas (HKH) gathered to mark the accelerating disappearance of Yala Glacier in Langtang, Nepal on Monday according to a statement by Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). Yala is the first glacier in Asia and the third glacier worldwide to carry a plaque with words by author, Andri Snaer Magnason in its memory. Plaques bearing his message also sit at the site of the world's first glacier funeral, which took place in Magnason's native Iceland in 2019, for OK Glacier, and at the site of the funeral for Ayoloco glacier in Mexico in 2021. Funerals have also been held for the Swiss Pizol glacier in 2019, Clark glacier in Oregon in 2020, and Basodino glacier in Switzerland in 2021. In 2021, ICIMOD, with the United Nations, marked the disappearance of Lemthang Glacier, in Bhutan, which was wiped out by a glacial lake outburst flood in 2017. The stones left at the base of the Yala glacier carry messages by two authors, Manjushree Thapa and Andri Snaer Magnason, in English, Nepali and locally spoken Tibetan. Magnason's inscription reads: "A message to the future: Yala glacier is one of 54,000 glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalayas, most of which are expected to vanish this century due to global warming. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it. May 2025 426ppm CO2 [parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere]." Thapa's inscription reads: "Yala, where the gods dream high in the mountains, where the cold is divine. Dream of life in rock, sediment, and snow, in the pulverising of ice and earth, in meltwater pools the colour of sky. Dream. Dream of a glacier and the civilisations downstream. Entire ecosystems: our own sustenance. The cosmos. And all that we know and all that we love." Yala has shrunk by 66% and retreated 784m since it was first measured in the 1970s. Over 50 people, including Buddhist monks and members of local community, and glacier experts from Bhutan, China, India, and Nepal completed the arduous high-altitude trek to attend the "poignant" tribute on May 12, according to ICIMOD. The prayer meet featured a Buddhist ceremony, speeches, and the unveiling of the two granite memorial plaques which will sit at the foot of where the glacier stands. Yala is one of just seven glaciers in the entire 3,500km-long arc of HKH to have been monitored annually for a decade or more and it is one of 38 glaciers with in-situ measurements, providing crucial data on the speed and extent of losses....