The presence and influence of glacier surging around the Geladandong ice caps, North East Tibetan Plateau

Owen King,Atanu Bhattacharya,Tobias Bolch

doi:10.1016/j.accre.2021.05.001

Owen King, Atanu Bhattacharya + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.accre.2021.05.001

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Abstract

Many glaciers and ice caps on the Tibetan Plateau have retreated and lost mass in recent years in response to temperature increases, providing clear evidence of the impact of climate change on the region. There is increasing evidence that many of the glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau have also shown periodically dynamic behaviour in the form of glacier surging and some even catastrophic collapse events. In this study, we examine the prevalence of glacier surging at the Geladandong ice caps, North East Tibetan Plateau, to better understand the role of surge events in the evolution of glacier mass loss budgets. Using glacier surface elevation change data over the period 1969–2018 and glacier surface velocity data from the ITS_LIVE dataset, we find that 19 outlet glaciers of the ice caps are of surge-type. Our multi-temporal measurements of glacier mass balance show that surge-type glacier mass budgets vary depending on the portion of the surge-cycle captured by geodetic data. At the regional level, pre- and post-surge glacier mass loss variability does not bias regional mass budget estimates, but enhanced, or suppressed, mass loss estimates are likely when small groups of glaciers are examined. Our results emphasise the importance of accurate surge-type glacier inventories and the need to maximise geodetic data coverage over glacierised regions known to contain surge-type glaciers.

Highlights

The behaviour of glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau provides a clear indication of the impact of climate change on this remote region, the majority of which has an average altitude of more than 5000 m (Shi et al, 1980; Sakai et al, 2015)
In this study we aim to examine the evolution of the area, mass budget and surface velocity of the Geladandong ice cap glaciers over a multi-decadal time period to better understand sources of variability in ice loss at the intraregional scale on the Tibetan Plateau
We examine glacier area and glacier surface elevation change over the last 5 decades over the Geladandong ice caps (Fig. 1) using imagery collected by the Corona KH-4, Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) and different Landsat sensors (Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

The behaviour of glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau provides a clear indication of the impact of climate change on this remote region, the majority of which has an average altitude of more than 5000 m (Shi et al, 1980; Sakai et al, 2015). Along the plateaus southern edge (Gandise mountains), in central areas such as the western Nyainqentanghla and in the north east of the region, glacier retreat and mass loss have predominated recently (Yao et al, 2012; Bolch et al, 2019; Shean et al, 2020). Glacier recession in this region impacts local communities through the fluctuation of seasonal and longer term meltwater availability and through the prevalence of glacier hazards such as glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) (Allen et al, 2019)

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