Omiwatari to Himalaya | Climate Symposium in Nagano

17 October 2026. A public symposium connecting six centuries of winter observations at Lake Suwa with rapid environmental change in the Himalaya.

United Nations Decade of Action for Cryospheric Sciences (2025–2034)

Endorsed by the UNESCO Chair in Mountain Cryosphere and Water, Tribhuvan University, Nepal

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SPECIAL SYMPOSIUM · 17 OCTOBER 2026 · NAGANO

From the winter ice of Lake Suwa to the glaciers of the Himalaya, landscapes are recording profound environmental change.

Omiwatari to the Himalaya

Observing Change. Understanding Causes. Shaping Our Future.

This public symposium brings together centuries of observation from Suwa with contemporary experience from the Himalaya to explore what these changes are telling us and how we might respond.

Two mountain landscapes. One changing climate.

For generations, people around Lake Suwa have watched the lake freeze each winter.

Under particular conditions, the frozen surface expands and fractures, pushing the ice upwards into remarkable ridges known as Omiwatari — 御渡り.

The phenomenon has profound cultural and religious significance. Traditionally, the ridges were understood as the traces of a deity crossing the frozen lake.

At Yatsurugi Shrine, observations of Lake Suwa's winter conditions have been recorded for around six centuries.

Today, those records have another significance.

They allow us to see how one landscape has changed over an extraordinary span of time.

Thousands of kilometres away, the high mountains of the Himalaya are undergoing another transformation. Glaciers are retreating, glacial lakes are expanding, water systems are changing and extreme events are creating new risks for mountain communities.

Miwatari to the Himalaya brings these two landscapes into conversation.

What can we learn when we pay close attention to changes in nature over time?

Six centuries of watching winter

When Lake Suwa freezes deeply, repeated changes in temperature can cause the ice to expand and contract.

Under the right conditions, cracks in the frozen surface push upwards to form long ridges of ice: Omiwatari.

For centuries, the phenomenon has been observed in connection with the religious traditions of the Suwa region.

Yatsurugi Shrine has maintained records of the lake's winter conditions for approximately 600 years, creating an exceptional historical record of the relationship between people, climate and landscape.

In recent decades, the conditions required for Omiwatari have become increasingly rare.

Himalaya

The Himalaya contain the largest concentration of ice outside the polar regions and provide water to river systems on which hundreds of millions of people depend.

But the high mountains are changing rapidly.

During journeys through Nepal's Himalaya, Carole Fuchs has documented retreating glaciers, expanding glacial lakes and the experiences of communities living with these changes.

One landscape makes the transformation particularly visible.

A landscape transformed

Lower Barun: 1973 and today

A photograph taken in Nepal's Lower Barun valley in 1973 shows a very different landscape from the one visible today.

Where glacier and moraine once dominated the valley, an expanding lake now occupies much of the landscape.

The photographs were taken from different positions, so they are not an exact photographic repeat. But identifiable features of the surrounding valley make it possible to see the remarkable scale of the transformation.

WHY BRING THESE PLACES TOGETHER?

Different mountains, shared questions.

Lake Suwa and the Himalaya are separated by thousands of kilometres and have very different environments, histories and cultures. The purpose of this symposium is not to suggest that they are the same. It is to ask what becomes visible when different forms of observation are brought together.

Long historical records
Scientific evidence.
Religious and cultural memory.

The observations of people who have lived alongside particular landscapes for generations and the experience of people travelling through places undergoing rapid environmental change. Together, they raise questions that extend far beyond either Lake Suwa or the Himalaya.

What will we explore?

What can centuries of observation tell us about environmental change?
What are changes in ice and water telling us about a warming climate?
What can scientific evidence and local knowledge learn from one another?
How are communities responding to changes that are already underway?
When does adaptation become difficult or impossible?
What do we want to protect and pass on to future generations?

Recent Floods in Nepal

When environmental change becomes immediate

Changes in glaciers, snow, rainfall and mountain water systems are not only questions for the distant future.

Recent destructive flooding affecting Nepal and Tibet has again demonstrated how events originating in high mountain regions can rapidly affect communities far downstream.

The symposium will consider what such events tell us about observation, preparedness, climate risk and the limits of our ability to adapt.

Rather than treating extreme events as isolated disasters, we will ask how they fit within a wider picture of environmental change across the Himalayan region.

Speakers

Kiyoshi Miyasaka

宮坂清
Chief Priest, Yatsurugi Shrine

Kiyoshi Miyasaka was born in the Suwa region and has served as a Shinto priest at shrines including Fushimi Inari Taisha and Suwa Taisha.

Since 1986, he has conducted the Omiwatari observation ceremony at Lake Suwa.

Through the work of Yatsurugi Shrine, he is part of a tradition of observing and recording the winter condition of Lake Suwa that stretches back approximately six centuries.

He also serves in roles relating to Shinto cultural heritage in Suwa.

Carole Fuchs

Climate policy specialist · Himalayan explorer

Carole Fuchs works on climate, nature and environmental policy, with experience spanning government, international cooperation, renewable energy and climate diplomacy.

Until April 2025, she worked at the British Embassy in Tokyo on climate change and biodiversity policy.

Alongside her policy work, she has spent extensive periods travelling through the Himalaya as a mountain athlete and explorer, documenting environmental change and speaking with communities experiencing its consequences.

Her work asks how evidence from rapidly changing mountain environments can better inform climate decisions.