Abstract
Abstract. Glacier surging is an unusual instability of ice flow, and inventories of surging glaciers are important for regional glacier mass balance studies and glacier dynamic studies. Glacier surges in High Mountain Asia (HMA) have been widely reported. However, the completeness of available inventories of HMA surging glaciers is hampered by the insufficient spatial and temporal coverage of glacier change observations or by the limitations of the identification methods. In this study, we established a new inventory of HMA surging glaciers based on glacier surface elevation changes and morphological changes over 4 decades. Three elevation change datasets based on four elevation sources (the KH-9 DEM, NASA DEM, COP30 DEM, and HMA DEM) and long-term Landsat satellite image series were utilized to assess the presence of typical surge features over two time periods (1970s–2000 and 2000–2020). A total of 890 surging and 336 probably or possibly surging glaciers were identified in HMA. Compared to the most recent inventory of surging glaciers in HMA, our inventory incorporated 253 previously unidentified surging glaciers. The number and area of surging glaciers accounted for ∼2.49 % (excluding glaciers smaller than 0.4 km2) and ∼16.59 % of the total glacier number and glacier area in HMA, respectively. Glacier surges were found in 21 of the 22 subregions of HMA (except for the Dzhungarsky Alatau); however, the density of surging glaciers is highly uneven. Glacier surges occur frequently in the northwestern subregions (e.g., Pamir and Karakoram) but less often in the peripheral subregions. The inventory further shows that surge activity is more likely to occur for glaciers with a larger area, longer length, and wider elevation range. Among glaciers with similar areas, the surging ones usually have steeper slopes than non-surging ones. The inventory and elevation change products of identified surging glaciers are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7961207 (Guo et al., 2023).
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.