Abstract
Abstract. Monitoring glacier fluctuations provides insights into changing glacial environments and recent climate change. The availability of satellite imagery offers the opportunity to view these changes for remote and inaccessible regions. Gaining an understanding of the ongoing changes in such regions is vital if a complete picture of glacial fluctuations globally is to be established. Here, satellite imagery (Landsat 7, 8 and ASTER) is used to conduct a multi-annual remote sensing survey of glacier fluctuations on the Kamchatka Peninsula (eastern Russia) over the 2000–2014 period. Glacier margins were digitised manually and reveal that, in 2000, the peninsula was occupied by 673 glaciers, with a total glacier surface area of 775.7 ± 27.9 km2. By 2014, the number of glaciers had increased to 738 (reflecting the fragmentation of larger glaciers), but their surface area had decreased to 592.9 ± 20.4 km2. This represents a ∼ 24 % decline in total glacier surface area between 2000 and 2014 and a notable acceleration in the rate of area loss since the late 20th century. Analysis of possible controls indicates that these glacier fluctuations were likely governed by variations in climate (particularly rising summer temperatures), though the response of individual glaciers was modulated by other (non-climatic) factors, principally glacier size, local shading and debris cover.
Highlights
Since glaciers are intrinsically linked to climate (Oerlemans et al, 1998), fluctuations in their dimensions are some of the best natural indicators of recent climate change (Lemke et al, 2007; Paul et al, 2009)
52 glaciers have tongues covered with debris, the majority of which exist on volcanic slopes in the Central Kamchatka Depression
Based on the data presented in the Catalogue of Glaciers in the USSR and the findings of the present study, there was a ∼ 11.2 % decline in glacier surface area on the Kamchatka Peninsula between the 1950s and 2000 and a further ∼ 23.6 % loss between 2000 and 2014
Summary
Since glaciers are intrinsically linked to climate (Oerlemans et al, 1998), fluctuations in their dimensions are some of the best natural indicators of recent climate change (Lemke et al, 2007; Paul et al, 2009). The improved quality and availability of satellite imagery has allowed fluctuations of glaciers in isolated and often inaccessible regions to be studied remotely (Gao and Liu, 2001; Raup et al, 2007) This can reveal key information concerning the changing local climate and provide insights into specific controls on glacier behaviour (e.g. allowing the role of climatic forcing and non-climatic modulation to be assessed) (Tennant et al, 2012; Stokes et al, 2013; Burns and Nolin, 2014). The Kamchatka Peninsula is of particular interest because investigation of its recent glacial history has been limited (cf. Khromova et al, 2014; Earl and Gardner, 2016), despite being the largest glacierised area in NE Asia (Solomina et al, 2007) and a region where glaciers, climate and active volcanoes currently interact (Barr and Solomina, 2014)
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