Changes in the End-of-Summer Snow Line Altitude of Summer-Accumulation-Type Glaciers in the Eastern Tien Shan Mountains from 1994 to 2016

Abstract

For summer-accumulation-type glaciers, the glaciological literature is lacking studies on determining the snow line altitude (SLA) from optical images at the end of the summer as an indicator of the equilibrium line altitude (ELA). This paper presents a workflow for extracting the SLA from Landsat images based on the variation in the albedo with the altitude in the central line area of glaciers. The correlation of >0.8 at the 99% confidence level between the retrieved SLAs with ELAs derived from the interpolation of ground-based, mass balance measurements indicated that the workflow can be applied to derive the SLA from end-of-summer satellite data as an indicator of ELA. The ELA was under-estimated by the calculated SLA. The relationship between the end-of-summer SLA and the ELA depends on the intensity of glacier melting. Subsequently, the workflow was applied to the seven glaciers in the Eastern Tien Shan Mountains, and a time series of the SLA was obtained using 12 end-of-summer Landsat scenes from 1994 to 2016. Over the whole study period, a mean SLA of 4011.6 ± 20.7 m above sea level (a.s.l.) was derived for the seven investigated glaciers, and an increasing SLA was demonstrated. The increase in SLAs was consistent for the seven glaciers from 1994 to 2016. Concerning the spatial variability, the east–west difference was prominent, and these differences exhibited a decreasing trend. The average SLA of each glacier is more influenced by its morpho-topographic variables. The interannual variations in the average SLA are mainly driven by the increasing summer air temperature, and the high correlation with the cumulative summer solid precipitation reflects the characteristics of the summer-accumulation-type glaciers.