Anthropogenic climate change drives melting of glaciers in the Himalaya

Romshoo, Shakil Ahmad; Murtaza, Khalid Omar; Shah, Waheed; Ramzan, Tawseef; Ameen, Ummer; Bhat, Mustafa Hameed

Anthropogenic climate change drives melting of glaciers in the Himalaya

2022

The Himalayan glaciers provide water to a large population in south Asia for a variety of purposes and ecosystem services. As a result, regional monitoring of glacier melting and identification of the drivers are important for understanding and predicting future cryospheric melting trends. Using multi-date satellite images from 2000 to 2020, we investigated the shrinkage, snout retreat, thickness changes, mass loss and velocity changes of 77 glaciers in the Drass basin, western Himalaya, India. During this period, the total glacier cover has shrunk by 5.31 ± 0.33 km². The snout retreat ranged from 30 to 430 m (mean 155 ± 9.58 m). Debris cover had a significant impact on glacier melting, with clean glaciers losing ~ 5% more than debris-covered glaciers (~ 2%). The average thickness change and mass loss of glacier have been − 1.27 ± 0.37 and − 1.08 ± 0.31 m w.e.a⁻¹, respectively. Because of the continuous melting and the consequent mass loss, average glacier velocity has reduced from 21.35 ± 3.3 m a⁻¹ in 2000 to 16.68 ± 1.9 m a⁻¹ by 2020. During the observation period, the concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs), black carbon (BC) and other pollutants from vehicular traffic near the glaciers increased significantly. Increasing temperatures, caused by a significant increase in GHGs, black carbon and other pollutants in the atmosphere, are driving glacier melting in the study area. If the current trend continues in the future, the Himalayan glaciers may disappear entirely, having a significant impact on regional water supplies, hydrological processes, ecosystem services and transboundary water sharing.

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