Snowmelt and Snow Sublimation in the Indus Basin

Gascoin, Simon

doi:10.3390/w13192621

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 27 publications

(52 reference statements)

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“…Here, we fill this clear scale gap between point and very large scale HMA estimates. Our simulations reinforce the findings of previous studies (e.g., Gascoin, 2021;Mandal et al, 2022;Pradhananga & Pomeroy, 2022;Sherpa et al, 2023;Stigter et al, 2018) that understanding the processes of evaporation and sublimation from frozen surfaces is crucial in glacierized, high-elevation catchments, as snow and ice melt alone do not provide the entire picture of the cryosphere-related water fluxes (Figure 9).…”

Section: Importance Of Evapotranspiration For the Water Balancesupporting

confidence: 87%

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Land Surface Modeling in the Himalayas: On the Importance of Evaporative Fluxes for the Water Balance of a High‐Elevation Catchment

Buri,

Fatichi,

Shaw

et al. 2023

Water Resources Research

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High Mountain Asia (HMA) is among the most vulnerable water towers globally and yet future projections of water availability in and from its high‐mountain catchments remain uncertain, as their hydrologic response to ongoing environmental changes is complex. Mechanistic modeling approaches incorporating cryospheric, hydrological, and vegetation processes in high spatial, temporal, and physical detail have never been applied for high‐elevation catchments of HMA. We use a land surface model at high spatial and temporal resolution (100 m and hourly) to simulate the coupled dynamics of energy, water, and vegetation for the 350 km2 Langtang catchment (Nepal). We compare our model outputs for one hydrological year against a large set of observations to gain insight into the partitioning of the water balance at the subseasonal scale and across elevation bands. During the simulated hydrological year, we find that evapotranspiration is a key component of the total water balance, as it causes about the equivalent of 20% of all the available precipitation or 154% of the water production from glacier melt in the basin to return directly to the atmosphere. The depletion of the cryospheric water budget is dominated by snow melt, but at high elevations is primarily dictated by snow and ice sublimation. Snow sublimation is the dominant vapor flux (49%) at the catchment scale, accounting for the equivalent of 11% of snowfall, 17% of snowmelt, and 75% of ice melt, respectively. We conclude that simulations should consider sublimation and other evaporative fluxes explicitly, as otherwise water balance estimates can be ill‐quantified.

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Section: Importance Of Evapotranspiration For the Water Balancesupporting

confidence: 87%

“…As a result, the importance of evapotranspiration for the hydrology of high altitude environments remains unknown and the rare existing estimates of snow sublimation (Gascoin, 2021; Mandal et al., 2022; Reba et al., 2012; Stigter et al., 2018) refer only to the point or regional scale.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Land Surface Modeling in the Himalayas: On the Importance of Evaporative Fluxes for the Water Balance of a High‐Elevation Catchment

Buri,

Fatichi,

Shaw

et al. 2023

Water Resources Research

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“…While dry, arid conditions dominate across the northeastern part of the UIB (Joshi et al, 2005;Gascoin, 2021), we do not see turbulent fluxes dominate in this area as Gascoin (2021) finds for snow because turbulent fluxes can dominate snow mass loss while radiative fluxes dominate the ice mass loss. Compared to snow, glacier ice extends to lower elevations throughout the summer (experiencing warmer temperatures and, thus, more longwave fluxes); additionally, it is darker than snow for longer periods of time and, thus, absorbs more shortwave radiation.…”

Section: Meltcontrasting

confidence: 51%

Indus River Basin Glacier Melt at the Subbasin Scale

Giese

Rupper²,

Keeler³

et al. 2022

Front. Earth Sci.

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Pakistan is the most glaciated country on the planet but faces increasing water scarcity due to the vulnerability of its primary water source, the Indus River, to changes in climate and demand. Glacier melt constitutes over one-third of the Indus River’s discharge, but the impacts of glacier shrinkage from anthropogenic climate change are not equal across all eleven subbasins of the Upper Indus. We present an exploration of glacier melt contribution to Indus River flow at the subbasin scale using a distributed surface energy and mass balance model run 2001–2013 and calibrated with geodetic mass balance data. We find that the northern subbasins, the three in the Karakoram Range, contribute more glacier meltwater than the other basins combined. While glacier melt discharge tends to be large where there are more glaciers, our modeling study reveals that glacier melt does not scale directly with glaciated area. The largest volume of glacier melt comes from the Gilgit/Hunza subbasin, whose glaciers are at lower elevations than the other Karakoram subbasins. Regional application of the model allows an assessment of the dominant drivers of melt and their spatial distributions. Melt energy in the Nubra/Shyok and neighboring Zaskar subbasins is dominated by radiative fluxes, while turbulent fluxes dominate the melt signal in the west and south. This study provides a theoretical exploration of the spatial patterns to glacier melt in the Upper Indus Basin, a critical foundation for understanding when glaciers melt, information that can inform projections of water supply and scarcity in Pakistan.

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“…The annual runoff of the Indus Basin is about 207 billion m 3 , originating mainly from the melt water of glaciers (Gascoin 2021 ). Global warming has accelerated the melting of Himalayan glaciers, raising the river runoff in a short period of time, but the amount of river water resources will be greatly reduced in the next few decades (Hussan et al 2020 ).…”

Section: Water Resources In the Indus Basinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable water resources development and management in large river basins: an introduction

Wang

et al. 2022

Environ Earth Sci

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Water resources are important in large basins which are important places for human habitation and industrial and agricultural development. The background of editing this thematic issue was introduced and the general water resources situation and water quality status in four major large river basins in the Asian and African continents were briefly summarized to give readers general pictures of water resources development and management in these basins, and these large river basins are the Yellow River Basin, the Yangtze River Basin, the Indus Basin, and the Nile Basin. The thematic issue papers were classified into four clustered topical categories, and the main points of the papers in this thematic issue were summarized. Finally, the perspectives of future sustainable water resources development and management in large river basins were proposed.

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Snowmelt and Snow Sublimation in the Indus Basin

Cited by 7 publications

References 27 publications

Land Surface Modeling in the Himalayas: On the Importance of Evaporative Fluxes for the Water Balance of a High‐Elevation Catchment

Land Surface Modeling in the Himalayas: On the Importance of Evaporative Fluxes for the Water Balance of a High‐Elevation Catchment

Indus River Basin Glacier Melt at the Subbasin Scale

Sustainable water resources development and management in large river basins: an introduction

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