The world’s greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows.

The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.

According to Prof Jonathan Bamber this was “very unexpected” with “negligible mass loss from high mountain Asia, which is not significantly different from zero.”

Scientists are careful to point out that lower-altitude glaciers in the Asian mountain ranges – sometimes dubbed the “third pole” – are definitely melting. Satellite images and reports confirm this. But over the study period from 2003-10 enough ice was added to the peaks to compensate.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/08/glaciers-mountains

so global warming causes more precipitation at high altitudes where it freezes compensating for a higher equilibrium altitude for glaciers in general.