Abstract
Accurate assessment of glacier mass loss is essential for understanding the glacier sensitivity to climate change and the ramifications of glacier retreat or surge. The glacier melt affects the runoff and water availability, on which the drinking and irrigation water supplies and generation of hydroelectric energy depend upon. The excessive glacial retreat may cause flood, glacial lake outburst flood, avalanches and sea level rise which are likely to affect the lives and livelihood of the people and damage the infrastructure. Here, we present a remote sensing based modeling framework to improve the understanding of accumulation and ablation processes and to quantify the glacier mass balance using multispectral satellite imageries, as several glacierized regions of the world are still poorly monitored because the field measurements for continuous monitoring on a large scale or in a complex harsh terrain are costly, time consuming and difficult. The developed modeling framework has been applied to the Parvati glacier in the western Himalaya to investigate glaciological processes and estimate the surface mass loss using 19 years of satellite images from 1998 to 2016. It spreads over 425.318 km2 and more than 50% of the area is accumulation area. The study shows that the Parvati glacier is not in equilibrium and its behavioural response changes year to year characterized with high rate of mass loss. The value of accumulation area ratio varies between 0.33 and 0.70 with an average value of 0.55, indicating a negative mass loss. The mean specific mass loss is − 0.49 ± 0.11 m w.e. and the total mass loss is 3.95 Gt., indicating strong influence of climate change and effect on river flows and water availability.
Highlights
Accurate assessment of glacier mass loss is essential for understanding the glacier sensitivity to climate change and the ramifications of glacier retreat or surge
The negative mass balance denoting glacier mass loss can be attributed to less snowfall and increased temperature because of global or regional warming and precipitation deficiency in the basin as a result of climate change
The modeling framework developed in this study provides an efficient tool for improved understanding of glacier geomorphology, accumulation and ablation processes and to compute glacier mass balance using multispectral satellite images to understand the hydrodynamics of glaciers and its interaction with hydrology, climatology and environment in the region
Summary
Accurate assessment of glacier mass loss is essential for understanding the glacier sensitivity to climate change and the ramifications of glacier retreat or surge. The literature review shows that the studies on the Himalayan glaciers are very limited These studies include geomorphology, mass balance and dynamics of glaciers, and are mainly based on the field measurements of snow and meteorological parameters, and remote sensing data consisting of aerial photographs and satellite images. It may be noted while using remote sensing products that the glacier movements can be calculated only after the removal of topographic information, otherwise the images will be replete with noise due to geometry. The geomorphological s tudy[17] of the Alaknanda glacier in the Ganga basin shows that the Alaknanda glacier accounts 16.77% glaciated region of the Ganga basin and the glaciers in the Alaknanda sub-basin are dirty due to higher percentage of ablation area under debris cover
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