Chapter 2: Consequences of climate change for the cryosphere in the Hindu Kush Himalaya

Jackson, Miriam; Azam, Mohd Farooq; Baral, Prashant; Benestad, Rasmus; Brun, Fanny; Sher, Muhammad; Pradhananga, Saurav; Shrestha, Finu; Steiner, Jakob; Thapa, Amrit

doi:10.53055/icimod.1030

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 214 publications

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“…Changes in climate, glaciers, and glacial lakes and their potential impacts are often studied together due to their interlinkages (Jackson et al 2023). Several studies have provided the overview of climate change and its impacts on the cryosphere, hydrological regime, and biodiversity in the HKH and surrounding regions (Miller et al 2012(Miller et al , 2013You et al 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change and its impacts on glaciers and glacial lakes in Nepal Himalayas

Khadka,

Chen,

Sharma

et al. 2023

Reg Environ Change

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Nepal, a Himalayan country, is often chosen by global scientists to study climate change and its impact on the Himalayan environment. The changes in temperature, precipitation, glaciers, and glacial lakes over Nepal are comprehensively reviewed based on published literature and compared with regional studies. Furthermore, the published glacier datasets were used to calculate and analyze the changes in area, equilibrium line of altitude (ELA) and ice reserves to show the response of glaciers to climate change. We find that the warming trend (0.02 to 0.16 °C yr−1) is being more pronounced over Nepal, and heterogeneous changes in precipitation amount, pattern, and frequency are observed with no significant trend. Concurrently, the glaciers are found to be responding with heterogeneous shrinkage in area (− 1 to − 5 km2 yr−1), possessing negative mass balance (− 0.3 to − 0.8 m w.e. yr−1), decrease in ice volume (− 4.29 km3 yr−1) and upward shift of the ELA (~ 20.66 m decade−1). The total decrease in ice reserve (− 128.84 km3) of Nepal has resulted in ~ 0.32 mm of sea level rise in past 30 years. Moreover, the formation and surface area expansion (0.83 % yr−1) of glacial lakes over Nepal have been accelerated. Additionally, we note that Nepal is highly susceptible to glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) events and document a total of 45 reliable reported and unreported historical GLOF events from 39 glacial lakes across Nepal. This review will facilitate a comprehensive understanding of the current state of climate change and the identification of existing knowledge gaps in Nepal.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change and its impacts on glaciers and glacial lakes in Nepal Himalayas

Khadka,

Chen,

Sharma

et al. 2023

Reg Environ Change

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“…Over the last decade, rapid development has been made through satellite geodetic MB estimates covering almost all glacierized areas in the Himalaya (Brun et al, 2017;Bolch et al, 2019;Shean et al, 2020;Hugonnet et al, 2021;Jackson et al, 2023). These geodetic estimates are primarily available at a multiannual scale and thus cannot be used to understand the interannual variability in glacier MB.…”

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confidence: 99%

Reanalysis of the longest mass balance series in Himalaya using nonlinear model: Chhota Shigri Glacier (India)

Azam,

Vincent,

Srivastava

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Abstract. In-situ glacier‒wide mass balances (MB) from traditional glaciological method often carry systematic biases. The glacier‒wide MB series on Chhota Shigri Glacier has been reanalysed by combining the traditional MB reanalysis framework and a nonlinear MB model. The nonlinear model is preferred over the traditional glaciological method to compute the glacier‒wide MBs as the former can capture the spatiotemporal variability of point MBs from a heterogeneous in-situ point MB network. Further, nonlinear model is also used to detect the erroneous measurements from the point MB observations over 2002‒2023. ASTER and Pléiades stereo-imagery show limited areal changes but negative mass balances of ‒0.38 ± 0.05 m w.e. a−1 during 2003‒2014 and ‒0.51 ± 0.06 m w.e. a−1 during 2014‒2020. The nonlinear model outperforms the traditional glaciological method and agrees better with these geodetic estimates. The reanalysed mean glacier‒wide MB over 2002‒2023 is ‒0.47 ± 0.19 m w.e. a−1, equivalent to a cumulative loss of ‒9.81 m w.e. Our analysis suggests that the nonlinear model can also be used to complete the MB series if for some years the field observations are poor or unavailable. With this analysis, we revisit the glacier-wide MB series of Chhota Shigri Glacier and provide the most accurate and up-to-date version of this series, the longest continuous ever recorded in the Himalaya. We recommend applying the nonlinear model on all traditional glaciological mass balance series worldwide whenever data is sufficient, especially in the Himalaya where in-situ data are often missing due to access issues.

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