(wind blowing) (monks chanting) (ritualistic traditional music) (gentle upbeat music) - [Alize] Right now, our environment is facing rapid and dramatic change, from global warming to rising sea levels to new invasive species.

As a global community, we know what we need to do to address these problems at their source, but we will also have to adapt.

In fact, for millions of people around the world, adaptation is already a part of everyday life.

My name is Alize Carrere.

I'm a scientist and National Geographic Explorer living in Miami, Florida, a city where adaptation to climate change is right at our doorstep.

I study how human lives are impacted by environmental change.

And in my work, I envisioned the kind of futures we want to live in.

My research has taken me around the world where I've learned from communities who have had to experiment with new ways to survive.

From the reefs of the South Pacific to the rivers of the American Midwest.

In this series, we'll discover some of the innovative and surprising ways people are learning to adapt.

These are their stories.

(gentle upbeat music continues) (calm music) Ladakh is a region nestled in the Himalayan mountains, in the Northernmost part of India.

It's one of the highest regions on earth.

Leh, the largest town in Ladakh is situated at nearly 12,000 feet above sea level.

The area is home to magnificent monasteries and diverse communities that thrive in this arid high mountain desert.

(indistinct chatter) The dry and barren landscape is colored with centuries old Buddhist stupas.

Stupas represent Buddha's spiritual being in the physical world, his living energy and protective powers.

In Buddhism, walking around a stupa is a form of meditation.

It focuses energy on the endless cycle of rebirth and the eightfold path that leads to freedom from suffering.

(calm music continues) I've come to this region to understand how communities are experiencing the effects of climate change.

Ladakhi people contribute very few emissions to the climate crisis, and yet they are among some of the most severely impacted by it.

In Ladakh, increasing global temperatures are causing glaciers to melt more sporadically, creating a chaotic mix of drought and flash floods that can cause severe damage to local communities.

Farmers and villagers who plan for seasonal harvests are at the mercy of unpredictable and often dangerous water flows.

Sonam Wangchuk, a Ladakhi teacher and engineer has created a remarkable solution to this problem, building off the work of Chewang Norphel, a civil engineer from Ladakh known as the Iceman of India.

They're inspired by the physical landscape and spiritual structures that surround his home.

Sonam calls them ice stupas and they are as beautiful as they are practical.

(wind blowing) - [Sonam] Ladakh is generally a total desert, high-altitude desert, but wherever streams are, people have green.

So on your left, you can see the village which has been green, but right on your right, it's all total desert.

The difference is not that we don't have any water, but that we don't have water in the critical months of April and May.

That's the solution that ice stupas provide.

(water flowing) (gentle music) - [Alize] As Sonam explains, water needs to be readily available to farmers during the peak months of spring when crops are planted.

Ice stupas help ensure there will always be a steady supply of water.

The team is building a large ice stupa in the middle of the desert.

Over the winter months, this stupa will grow to nearly 90 feet tall, storing water in the form of a giant ice pyramid.

What's amazing about the ice stupa innovation is its simplicity.

A pipe is connected to a high elevation stream that's being fed by melting glaciers.

This pipe is connected to a dome shaped structure at a lower elevation.

When the water flows down the pipe, the pressure created by the difference in heights creates a fountain.

This fountain is the key mechanism for why ice stupas can be grown.

As the water sprays out of the pipe, it's dispersed into misty droplets exposing more of it to freezing air temperatures than if it had remained in the stream.

As the fountain sprays, the freezing droplets eventually form a growing cone of ice.

The ice growth is fast as at night when the temperatures are well below zero.

In the spring, the ice stupa will melt slowly because the cone structure reduces the exposed surface area of ice that the sun hits.

As the ice stupa melts, it provides a water source to irrigate trees and crops when it's most needed.

(gentle music continues) (water flowing) - [Sonam] The first extension can be done from outside, but afterwards it's too high to reach, so it has to be done from inside.

I'll do like this.

You don't need to, your boots are tall enough.

You can wade.

When the stupa attains a good height, then you want the pipe to go higher and higher.

That's our mechanism to hold the pipe.

When the ice reaches 40 feet, then it's no good to have this pipe at 40 feet.

You want 50.

Then you can add a 10 foot pipe here because as it grows, the ice becomes the structure that holds this 50 to 60 feet pipe.

- [Alize] Installing the pipes that actually bring the water from the high elevation stream to the stupa is also a process to master.

The pipes must be buried deep in the ground for insulation.

Otherwise they freeze.

On my visit, this is exactly what happened, but even when things didn't go to plan, the team was quick to improvise simple effective solutions.

Using hot water and steam, they warmed the source pipes and freed them of ice so water could run to the stupa again, and that was great news because we'd all been anxiously waiting to see the ice stupa in action.

(wind blowing) So I've just gotten a call that water is running in the ice stupa.

So we're going to go check it out right now.

It's four o'clock in the morning and apparently the pipes have been completely unfrozen so we're going to go check out how it's spraying.

Wow.

(calm music) (water spraying) The ice stupa was finally underway and it expands quickly.

In just one night, a stupa can grow several feet in height.

Right now we're seeing a lot of sticks and debris all over the ice stupa.

It's basically to create more surface area in the initial stages of the ice stupa formation.

And then once this starts to build out, the sticks will be completely covered and it will just be one massive ice.

If I stand here long enough, I'll turn it into a stupa.

(calm music continues) (water spraying) Like all adaptation processes, experimentation is critical.

The ice stupa team is working on multiple shapes and sizes of ice stupas to see which is most effective.

Smaller ice stupas nestled in stream beds is another approach.

- [Sonam] So these are smaller stupas but it will be taller than this.

It'll be twice this still.

What has really worked well is the main pipe and the feeding pipe are all very big.

Whereas for thinner pipes, we have to insulate it or bury it in the ground.

These don't need burying and it will connect to the next stupa and form a field of ice that's like 15 feet tall.

- [Alize] The individual stream bed stupas are designed to fuse together into one long frozen bed of ice.

As water spills out the top of each stupa, it freezes the base, expanding until it meets the growing ice mass of another nearby stupa.

Throughout the winter, the chain of stupas grows thicker and higher as water continues to flow out of the pipes.

When spring arrives, the frozen field of ice and the stupas will melt away and provide water to the village.

Sonam's ice stupa techniques are part of a bigger vision he has for the region.

He has plans to build an ecological university campus in this valley that will eventually be fed and sustained by many ice stupas.

The university educates students from the region on issues that are relevant to living with their rapidly changing environment.

- [Sonam] It'll start as a small alternative university and then ultimately a township and a green city.

All along the edge of the mountain and the desert will be ice stupas definitely and we might make some artificial lakes.

- Great.

So it's a continue all year round water supply?

- Yes.

Yes.

- Wow.

That's wonderful.

- Yes.

- [Alize] Even if Sonam's vision for an ecological township takes years to create, communities in the region are already mastering the art and science of ice stupas.

Over the last few years, more than 50 villages have participated in an annual ice stupa competition and the results are mesmerizing.

(uplifting music) The ice stupa team has one more extraordinary idea they're working on.

It requires a day long trek up the mountains beyond the highest village in the valley.

They're attempting to build an artificial glacier that will grow over the years.

- [Sonam] So we have started from the Piang Monastery area, which is 3,500 meters altitude.

We are going now to Murdock village, which is the last in this valley, and one of the highest villages around here at around 4,000 meters.

Our car will stop there because that's the last village and there'll be some horses waiting for us.

We'll then go up another two hours to around 4,600 meters.

(gentle music) - [Alize] At these heights, if not acclimated like Sonam and his team, altitude sickness can quickly set in.

- You must be feeling it in your lungs.

It's 4,400 meters.

- Not so much my lungs, but my head.

(chuckles) - Head.

Oh, you have a headache.

- A horrible headache.

- Oh yes, yes.

- Is the next stop vomiting?

- I hope not.

(Alize chuckles) This is not common for a Ladakhis to also come.

You know?

- No?

- It's only shepherds who would come up here for highland pastures.

So you are somewhere where not many people come.

(gentle music continues) - We finally arrived at the site of the planned artificial glacier five hours later at 15,000 feet above sea level.

- So we are at a Sunda here.

This is the place where two streams meet to form the Piang stream on which we are making glaciers.

The idea is if it all works right, then there'll be a chain of ice stupas throughout the valley down to the village.

They're digging for water and it's because it is all covered under ice, it's not easy to find the water.

- [Alize] So why would you build a stupa at this altitude as opposed to where we saw them earlier?

- Those stupas that you see at lower places, they'll last till May and that's a good use of it.

But these, we are experiment just to stretch our imagination and see if it can be made so high and so big that it doesn't melt fully by September and carry on the cycle into the next winter.

If this succeeds, it will actually be an artificial glacier that grows over the years.

(calm music) - [Alize] This experiment takes the stream bed stupa approach we saw at a lower elevation to new heights.

At these altitudes, a thick field of ice might just survive the warm summer months.

Next winter's growth would build on this existing base.

If Sonam and his team succeed, they would be the first in the world to grow an artificial glacier using this technique.

It would be the ultimate adaptation to preserve the Ladakhi way of life.

- [Sonam] I believe, like 50-50 or less, but it is worth trying.

(calm music) - [Alize] Sonam's willingness to experiment and his hope for the future are contagious.

The ice stupas of Ladakh show that simple adaptations can be the most powerful and that some failure is always part of the process.

What inspires me most about the ice stupa project is its profound connection to the culture and traditions of the region.

But adapting to climate change is only part of the answer.

We must urgently join as a global community to address our climate crisis at its source.

Sonam finds inspiration for this task in the words of Mahatma Gandhi.

"I live simply so that others may simply live."

(wind blowing) (gentle music)