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Contrasting geometric and dynamic evolution of lake and land-terminating glaciers in the central Himalaya

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Date
08/2018
Author
King, Owen
Dehecq, Amaury
Quincey, Duncan
Carrivick, Jonathan
Keywords
Digital elevation model
Glacial lake outburst floods
Glacial lakes
Glacier velocity
Himalaya
G Geography (General)
Oceanography
Global and Planetary Change
DAS
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Abstract
The impact of glacial lake development on the evolution of glaciers in the Himalaya is poorly quantified, despite the increasing prevalence of supraglacial and proglacial water bodies throughout the region. In this study we examine changes in the geometry, velocity and surface elevation of nine lake-terminating and nine land-terminating glaciers in the Everest region of the central Himalaya over the time period 2000 to 2015. The land-terminating glaciers we examined all decelerated (mean velocity change of −0.16 to −5.60 m a −1 for different glaciers), thinned most in their middle reaches, and developed a more gently sloping surface (−0.02 to −0.37° change) down-glacier over the period 2000–2015. The lake-terminating glaciers we examined all retreated (0.46 to 1.42 km), became steeper (0.04 to 8.68° change), and showed maximum thinning towards their termini, but differed in terms of their dynamics, with one group of glaciers accelerating (mean speed-up of 0.18 to 8.04 m a −1 ) and the other decelerating (mean slow-down of −0.36 m a −1 to −8.68 m a −1 ). We suggest that these two scenarios of glacier evolution each represent a different phase of glacial lake expansion; one that is accompanied by increasingly dynamic glacier behaviour and retreat, and a phase where glacial lakes have little impact on glacier behaviour that may precede or follow the phase of active retreat. Our observations are important because they quantify the interaction of glacial lake expansion with glacier ice mass loss, and show that increased glacier recession should be expected where a glacial lake has begun to develop.
Citation
King , O , Dehecq , A , Quincey , D & Carrivick , J 2018 , ' Contrasting geometric and dynamic evolution of lake and land-terminating glaciers in the central Himalaya ' , Global and Planetary Change , vol. 167 , pp. 46-60 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2018.05.006
Publication
Global and Planetary Change
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2018.05.006
ISSN
0921-8181
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY/4.0/).
Description
OK is a recipient of a NERC SPHERES DTP PhD Studentship (grant award NE/L002574/1). AD was supported by funding from the NASA Cryosphere Program. The research was conducted at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Agency.
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/19007

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