A Systematic, Regional Assessment of High Mountain Asia Glacier Mass Balance

Shean, David; Bhushan, Shashank; Montesano, P.; Rounce, David; Arendt, A. A.; Osmanoǧlu, Batuhan

doi:10.3389/feart.2019.00363

Cited by 347 publications

(439 citation statements)

References 85 publications

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“…(1) Digital Elevation Model (DEM) differencing (Berthier et al, 2010;Brun et al, 2017;Gardelle et al, 2013;Maurer et al, 2019;Shean et al, 2020), (2) satellite laser altimetry (Kääb et al, 2012(Kääb et al, , 2015Neckel et al, 2014;Treichler et al, 2019) and…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ice loss in High Mountain Asia and the Gulf of Alaska observed by CryoSat-2 swath altimetry between 2010 and 2019

Jakob¹,

Gourmelen²,

Ewart³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Abstract. Glaciers and ice caps are currently the largest non-steric contributor to sea level rise, contributing ~30 % to sea level budget. Global monitoring of these regions remains a challenging task since global estimates rely on a variety of observations and models to achieve the required spatial and temporal coverage, and significant differences remain between current estimates. Here we report the first application of a novel approach to retrieve spatially-resolved elevation and mass change from Radar Altimetry over entire mountain glaciers areas. We apply interferometric swath altimetry to CryoSat-2 data acquired between 2010 and 2019 over High Mountain Asia (HMA) and in the Gulf of Alaska (GoA). In addition, we extract monthly time series of elevation change, exploiting CryoSat's high temporal repeat, to reveal seasonal and multiannual variation in rates of glaciers' thinning at unprecedented spatial detail. We find that during this period, HMA and GoA have lost an average of −27.9 ± 2.4 Gt yr−1 (−0.29 ± 0.03 m w.e. yr−1) and −76.3 ± 5.6 Gt yr−1 (−0.89 ± 0.07 m w.e. yr−1) respectively, corresponding to a contribution to sea level rise of 0.048 ± 0.004 mm yr−1 and 0.217 ± 0.015 mm yr−1. Glacier thinning is ubiquitous except for the Karakoram-Kunlun region experiencing stable or slightly positive mass balance. In the GoA region the intensity of thinning varies spatially and temporally and correlates with the strength of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. In HMA we observe sustained multiannual trends until 2015-6, and decreased loss or even mass gain from 2016-17 onwards.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ice loss in High Mountain Asia and the Gulf of Alaska observed by CryoSat-2 swath altimetry between 2010 and 2019

Jakob¹,

Gourmelen²,

Ewart³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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“…Except the Antarctic and the Arctic, the HMA known as the third largest volume of solid water on Earth covers the area between 25°N and 45°N, and 67°E and 107°E ( Figure 1) (Barnett, Adam, Lettenmaier, 2005;Guo et al, 2015;Loomis et al, 2019). Through the personal communication with the author of boundary of Tibetan Plateau (Zhang, Li, & Zheng, 2002) and NASA High Mountain Asia Team (HiMAT) (Shean, et al, 2019;Joseph, 2019), the HMA boundary ( Figure 1) was defined as the region with altitude above 2000 min High Asia, and some south part of it was adjusted to make it reasonable geographically by Professor Zhang Yili (Zhang et al, 2002). In Figure 1, it shows that the distribution of glaciers, river and streams, and lakes differs significantly from basin to basin.…”

Section: Methodology and Data Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…High Mountain Asia (HMA) is an Asia high-altitude mountain region centered with Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, which holds the largest reservoir of glaciers and snow outside Earth polar regions, ranging from the Hindu Kush and Tien Shan in the northwest to the eastern Himalaya in the southeast, with altitude between 2000 and 8844 m (Bolch et al, 2019;Guo et al, 2015;Loomis et al, 2019;Qiu et al, 2019;Shean et al, 2019). It is an important area of alpine water resources at low and middle latitudes, contains different water storage types, for example, glaciers, river and streams, lakes, permafrost, and feed to several large rivers and endorheic basins which are therefore known as "Asia's water tower" (Barnett, Adam, Lettenmaier, 2005;Immerzeel, Van Beek, & Bierkens, 2010;Pritchard, 2017;Qiu, 2018;Yao et al, 2019;Zhu et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constructing dataset of classified drainage areas based on surface water-supply patterns in High Mountain Asia

Qiu

Wang

et al. 2020

Big Earth Data

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The High Mountain Asia (HMA) region, ranging from the Hindu Kush and Tien Shan in the west to the Himalaya in the south with an altitude between 2000 and 8844 m, holds the largest reservoir of glaciers and snow outside Earth Polar Regions. In the last decades, numerous glaciers and lake areas there have undergone tremendous changes with water redistribution. In order to increase understanding of the pattern of distribution of water resources, and their dynamic changes at the basin scale, a watershed classification based on the water replenishment patterns dataset was constructed. The input dataset are from the Randolph Glacier Inventory V.6.0 and the vector data of rivers and streams. Four datasets were thus obtained: Glacier-fed and Runoff-fed Drainage Area (GRDA), Glacier-fed and Runoff-free Drainage Area (GDA), Glacier-free and Runoff-fed Drainage Area (RDA), and the Glacier-free and Runoff-free Drainage Area (NGRDA), and the numbers of these four types of basins are 87, 107, 32, and 448 separately. The statistical results show GRDA has the largest surface area, accounting for 82.2% of the total basin area in HMA, mainly in the region of the basin with outflow rivers or streams. Dominated by small basins, the GDA area accounts for the smallest area, only 3.86% and the RDA accounts for 5.62%. For NGRDA, most are with small areas, accounting for 8.32%, and mainly distributes in the closed basin of the Qiangtang Plateau. This dataset provides a fundamental classified data source for research on water resources, climate, ecology, and environment in HMA. The published data are available at https:// data.4tu.nl/download/uuid:d07d748f-d10b-4308-9626-199ef05cc9af/ and http://www.dx.doi.org/10.11922/sciencedb.923.

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“…yr −1 ) than for the Karakoram (ranges from 0.18 to 0.11 m w.e. yr −1 ) (Lutz, 2016;Brun et al, 2017;Shean et al, 2020). Glaciers in the Karakoram exhibit characteristics of both the "summer accumulation" due to the summer monsoon and the "winter accumulation" due to the winter westerly disturbances (Kapnick et al, 2014;Bashir et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differential Impact of Climate Change on the Hydropower Economics of Two River Basins in High Mountain Asia

Mishra

Veselka

Prusevich

et al. 2020

Front. Environ. Sci.

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Water stored in the form of snow and glaciers in the High Mountain Asia (HMA) region regulates the water supply, and resultant water-based economies, that support the livelihoods of millions of people. Trends in the seasonal and long-term melting of snow and glaciers, governed by initial ice reserves, meteorological factors and geographic features, vary across sub-basins in the HMA region. We examined the economic impacts of climate-led changes in river flow in two drainage basins, one each from the Karakoram and Central Himalaya region. We used an integrated assessment framework to estimate the changes in economic value of the hydropower generation from hydropower plants on rivers fed by snow and glacier melt in the two sub-basins. The framework, developed under a NASA High Mountain Asia project, coupled biophysical models (a suite of climate models, snow/glacier-hydrology, and hydropower model) with economic analysis. We compared the differences in estimated river flow over historic and future time using the water balance model in sixteen scenarios (eight climate models and two emissions scenarios) for rivers upstream of hydropower plants in each sub-basin. Using the hydropower model we developed, we estimated the changes in hydropower generation at the Naltar IV hydropower plant, with an 18 MW capacity, located in Hunza, Karakoram, and the Trishuli hydropower plant, with a 19.6 MW capacity, in Trishuli, Central Himalaya. When compared to their baselines, the estimated impact of climate change and temporal variability were higher for the Naltar plant than for the Trishuli plant. Our sensitivity analysis shows that hydropower plants with water storage facilities help reduce the impact of changes, but the estimated impacts are higher for the higher capacity plants. This study provides an example of the differential impacts of climate change on hydropower plants located in rivers fed by varying amounts of snow and glacier melt at different decades in this century. This type of integrated assessment of climate change impact will support the scientific understanding of hydrologic flow and its impacts on a hydropower economy under various climate scenarios, as well as generate information about water resource management in a changing climate.

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A Systematic, Regional Assessment of High Mountain Asia Glacier Mass Balance

Cited by 347 publications

References 85 publications

Ice loss in High Mountain Asia and the Gulf of Alaska observed by CryoSat-2 swath altimetry between 2010 and 2019

Ice loss in High Mountain Asia and the Gulf of Alaska observed by CryoSat-2 swath altimetry between 2010 and 2019

Constructing dataset of classified drainage areas based on surface water-supply patterns in High Mountain Asia

Differential Impact of Climate Change on the Hydropower Economics of Two River Basins in High Mountain Asia

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