Recent (1980–2009) evidence of climate change in the upper Karakoram, Pakistan

Abstract

We investigate here recent (1980–2009) climate variability in the upper Karakoram, Northern Pakistan, of particular interest given the peculiar glacier behavior during the last two decades. Differently from other glacierized regions in the Hindu Kush–Karakoram–Himalaya region, glaciers in the Karakoram display limited ice thinning, and in some cases advancing has been detected. Climate analysis is required to describe recent (i.e., last three decades) variability, to aid highlighting of the factors driving glacier evolution. Starting from monthly data, we analyze seasonal values of total precipitation, number of wet days, maximum (max) and minimum (min) air temperature, max precipitation in 24 h, and cloud cover for 17 weather stations in the upper Karakoram, clustered within three climatic regions as per use of principal components analysis. We detect possible nonstationarity in each of these regions by way of (1) linear regression, (2) moving window average, and (3) Mann–Kendall test, also in progressive form, to detect the onset date of possible trends. We then evaluate linear correlation coefficients between Northern Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index and climate variables to assess effectiveness of teleconnections, claimed recently to affect climate in this area. Also, we compare temperature within the investigated zone against global temperature anomalies, to evidence enhanced warming within this area. We found mostly nonsignificant changes of total precipitation, unless for few stations displaying increase in Chitral-Hindu Kush region and Northwest Karakoram, or Gilgit area, and decrease in Western Himalaya, Kotli region. Max precipitation is mostly unchanged, unless for slight increase in Chitral and Gilgit areas, and slight decrease in Kotli region. Number of wet days is mostly increasing in Gilgit area, and decreasing in Chitral area, with no clear signal in Kotli region. Min temperatures increase always but during Summer, when decreasing values are detected, especially for Gilgit and Chitral regions. Max temperatures are found to increase everywhere. Cloud cover is significantly increasing in Gilgit area, but decreasing otherwise, especially in Kotli region. Max temperature regime is significantly positively correlated against global thermal anomaly, while min temperature regime is nonsignificantly negatively correlated. Max and min temperatures seem mostly negatively correlated to NAO. Some dependence of trend intensity for the considered variables against altitude is found, different for each region, suggesting that investigation of weather variables at the highest altitudes is warranted to discriminate further climate variability in the area.