Abstract
ABSTRACTWestern Kunlun Mountain (WKM) glaciers show balanced or even slightly positive mass budgets in the early 21st century, and this is anomalous in a global context of glacier reduction. However, it is unknown whether the stability prevails at longer time scales because mass budgets have been unavailable before 2000. Here topographical maps, Shuttle Radar Topography Mission and Landsat data are used to examine the area and surface elevation changes of glaciers on the WKM since the 1970s. Heterogeneous glacier behaviors are observed not only in the changes of length and area, but also in the spatial distribution of surface elevation changes. However, on average, glacier area and elevation changes are not significant. Glaciers reduce in the area by 0.07 ± 0.1% a−1 from the 1970s to 2016. Averaged glacier mass loss is −0.06 ± 0.13 m w.e. a−1 from the 1970s to 1999. These findings show that the WKM glacier anomaly extends back at least to the 1970s.
Highlights
In recent decades, much attention has been paid to global glacier reduction and its consequences for sea-level rise and the mountain ecosystem (e.g. Immerzeel and others, 2010; Gardelle and others, 2012a)
An IDL program acquired from NSIDC is used to convert the TOPEX/ Poseidon ellipsoid of GLA14 data to the WGS 84 ellipsoid, and further to EGM96 geoid based on the model from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)/NASA
Compared with multi-decadal glacier shrinkage rates of −0.57 to −0.40% a−1 found for High Mountain Asia (Cogley, 2016), the western Kunlun Mountains (WKM) glacier area shrinkage rate is an order of magnitude lower (Table 3)
Summary
Much attention has been paid to global glacier reduction and its consequences for sea-level rise and the mountain ecosystem (e.g. Immerzeel and others, 2010; Gardelle and others, 2012a). Glaciers located in the western Kunlun Mountains (WKM), Karakoram, Pamirs and Himalaya represent the largest ice masses outside of the polar regions (Smiraglia and others, 2007). They are the headwaters of many prominent rivers such as the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra, and play an important role as the water towers of Asia (Yao and others, 2012). In contrast to worldwide glacier reduction, their overall areas present no significant changes, with some glaciers advancing or surging in recent decades (e.g. Copland and others, 2011; Bhambri and others, 2013) Their mass is stable or even growing in the early 21st century (e.g. Bolch and others, 2012; Ke and others, 2015; Zhang and others, 2016)
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