Patterns and influencing factors of glacier changes in High Mountain Asia since the Little Ice Age

Abstract

High Mountain Asia (HMA) contains the largest glacier inventory outside the polar regions and the melting of these glaciers provides an important freshwater supply for over 250 million people in south, central, and east Asia. Recent studies have quantified glacier changes over the past decades in this area mainly based on the interpretation of satellite imagery, while few studies have investigated the longer-term (centennial-scale) glacier changes due to the lack of mapped outlines and reliable methods to reconstruct the three-dimensional surfaces and volumes of past glaciers. We compiled a dataset of >15,000 mapped glacier outlines during the Little Ice Age (LIA) in the Himalayas, Gangdise, Tanggula, and Tian Shan and reconstructed the ice thickness and volumes of LIA glaciers and their corresponding contemporary glaciers based on a flowline-based GIS model, PalaeoIce. Initial results of 640 LIA glaciers and their corresponding 1466 contemporary glaciers from Tian Shan indicate a total of 47.6% loss of ice volumes since the LIA and the ice volume loss are negatively correlated with glacier area and equilibrium line altitude. This presentation reports the reconstruction of >15,000 LIA glaciers and their corresponding >20,000 contemporary glaciers in the four mountain ranges (Himalayas, Gangdise, Tanggula, and Tian Shan) to examine the spatial pattern of LIA glacier changes and their influencing factors (climate, topography, and debris cover). This work provides important insights into the impacts of glacier changes on water resources in High Mountain Asia in the past 300-500 years.