Abstract
AbstractMost glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau have experienced continuous mass losses in response to global warming. However, the seasonal dynamics of glaciers on the southeastern Tibetan Plateau have rarely been reported in terms of glacier surface elevation and velocity. This paper presents a first attempt to explore the seasonal dynamics of the debris-covered Dagongba Glacier within the southeastern Tibetan Plateau. We use the multitemporal unoccupied aerial vehicle images collected over the lower ablation zone on 8 June and 17 October 2018, and 13 May 2019, and then perform an analysis concerning climatic fluctuations. The results reveal that the mean surface elevation decrease of the Dagongba Glacier during the warm season ($2.81\pm 0.44$ m) was remarkably higher than the cold season ($0.72\pm 0.45$ m). Particularly notable glacier surface elevation changes were found around supraglacial lakes and ice cliffs where ice ablation rates were $\sim$3 times higher than the average. In addition, a larger longitudinal decline of glacier surface velocity was observed in the warm season than that in the cold season. In terms of further comparative analysis, the Dagongba Glacier experienced a decrease in surface velocity between 1982–83 and 2018–19, with a decrease in the warm season possibly twice as large as that in the cold season.
Highlights
Glaciers are important components of global water resources and key indicators of climate change
To avoid bias caused by ice flux, we introduce the horizontal surface displacement derived by COSI-Corr from the digital orthophoto maps (DOMs) to evaluate the elevation changes for the flow correction, and estimate the mean emergence velocity and downslope motion of the Dagongba Glacier for June 2018–May 2019 with the flux gate method (Vincent and others, 2016; Brun and others, 2018):
This paper presents an attempt to explore seasonal dynamics in response to climatic fluctuations of the debris-covered Dagongba Glacier by using a low-cost unoccupied aerial vehicle (UAV) for the first time
Summary
Glaciers are important components of global water resources and key indicators of climate change. From 1951 to 2009, the temperature recorded in China increased by 0.24◦C decade−1 with the Tibetan Plateau increasing by 0.3 –0.4◦C decade−1 (Qin and others, 2009; Chen and others, 2015; Liu and others, 2015). As a result of global warming, the glaciers in High Mountain Asia have shown considerable mass losses, especially on the southeastern Tibetan Plateau at −4.0 + 1.5 Gt a−1 (−0.62 + 0.23 m w.e. a−1) (Brun and others, 2017). Understanding glacier dynamics, especially mass balance and surface velocity, is important for assessing the impact of climatic fluctuations on glacier changes (Cuffey and Paterson, 2010; Paul and others, 2015)
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