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"Himalaya Water Tower" Highscrapers to solve access to water?

18.03.2012

Chinese designer/engineers Zhi Zheng, Hongchuan Zhao and Dongbai Song have put forth a tantalizing proposal that combines human scientific ingenuity with a practical, prescient vision for a sustainable future. The approximately 55,000 icy glaciers in the Himalayan region hold 40 percent of the world’s fresh water and together act as the main water source for 7 of the world’s great rivers… and hundreds of millions of people who depend on them. The local hydrological cycle has generally been a self-sustaining mechanism for millions of years. Lately, however, the Himalayan glaciers (along with those in other parts of the world) have been retreating at an alarming rate under the influence of Global Warming. The prototypical "Himalaya Water Tower" is certainly tall: the expected temperature differences between each tower’s upper, central and lower portions are critical to its proper functioning as a water storage and dispersal device. Like the mighty Himalayas themselves, the towers will store ice in their heights and liquid water in their roots.