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High Mountain Asian glacier response to climate revealed by multi-temporal satellite observations since the 1960s

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Bhattacharya_2021_NatComms_High_mountains_CC.pdf (6.825Mb)
Date
05/07/2021
Author
Bhattacharya, Atanu
Bolch, Tobias
Mukherjee, Kriti
King, Owen George Ahren
Kapitsa, Vassiliy
Neckel, Niklas
Yao, Tandong
Keywords
GE Environmental Sciences
3rd-DAS
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Abstract
Knowledge about the long-term response of High Mountain Asian glaciers to climatic variations is paramount because of their important role in sustaining Asian river flow. Here, a satellite-based time series of glacier mass balance for seven climatically different regions across High Mountain Asia since the 1960s shows that glacier mass loss rates have persistently increased at most sites. Regional glacier mass budgets ranged from −0.40 ± 0.07 m w.e.a−1 in Central and Northern Tien Shan to −0.06 ± 0.07 m w.e.a−1 in Eastern Pamir, with considerable temporal and spatial variability. Highest rates of mass loss occurred in Central Himalaya and Northern Tien Shan after 2015 and even in regions where glaciers were previously in balance with climate, such as Eastern Pamir, mass losses prevailed in recent years. An increase in summer temperature explains the long-term trend in mass loss and now appears to drive mass loss even in regions formerly sensitive to both temperature and precipitation.
Citation
Bhattacharya , A , Bolch , T , Mukherjee , K , King , O G A , Kapitsa , V , Neckel , N & Yao , T 2021 , ' High Mountain Asian glacier response to climate revealed by multi-temporal satellite observations since the 1960s ' , Nature Communications , vol. 12 , 4133 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24180-y
Publication
Nature Communications
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24180-y
ISSN
2041-1723
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © The Author(s) 2021. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
Description
Funding: This study was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA20100300) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (200021E_177652/1). NN received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme (No. 689443).
Collections
  • University of St Andrews Research
URL
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24180-y#Sec21
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/23534

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