The Himalayan glaciers supply water to a large population in south Asia for various uses and ecosystem services. Therefore, regional monitoring of glacier melting and identifying the drivers thereof is important to understand and predict the future trends of cryospheric melting. Using multi-date satellite images from 2000-2020, we investigated the shrinkage, snout retreat, thickness changes, mass loss and velocity changes of 77 glaciers in the Drass basin, western Himalaya, India. The overall glacier cover has shrunk by 5.31±0.33 km2 during the period. Snout retreat varied between 30-430 m (mean 155±9.58 m). Debris-cover showed a significant influence on the glacier melting with the clean glaciers showing a higher loss of ~5% compared to the debris-covered glaciers (~2%). The glaciers on an average have shown thickness change and mass loss of -1.27±0.37 and -1.08±0.31 m w.e.a-1 respectively. 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 due to the continuous melting and the consequent mass loss of the glaciers. Concentration of the greenhouse gases (GHGs), black carbon and other pollutants from vehicular traffic plying in the vicinity of the glaciers has significantly increased during the observation period. Increasing temperatures, result of the significant increase of the GHGs and pollutants in the atmosphere, drive the glacier melting in the study area. If the situation continues in the future, the glaciers may disappear altogether in the Himalaya leading to significant impact on the regional water supplies, hydrological processes, ecosystem services and transboundary sharing of waters.

The Himalayan glaciers supply water to a large population in south Asia for various uses and ecosystem services. Therefore, regional monitoring of glacier melting and identifying the drivers thereof is important to understand and predict the future trends of cryospheric melting. Using multi-date satellite images from 2000-2020, we investigated the shrinkage, snout retreat, thickness changes, mass loss and velocity changes of 77 glaciers in the Drass basin, western Himalaya, India. The overall glacier cover has shrunk by 5.31±0.33 km 2 during the period. Snout retreat varied between 30-430 m (mean 155±9.58 m). Debriscover showed a signi cant in uence on the glacier melting with the clean glaciers showing a higher loss of ~5% compared to the debris-covered glaciers (~2%). The glaciers on an average have shown thickness change and mass loss of -1.27±0.37 and -1.08±0.31 m w.e.a -1 respectively. 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 due to the continuous melting and the consequent mass loss of the glaciers. Concentration of the greenhouse gases (GHGs), black carbon and other pollutants from vehicular tra c plying in the vicinity of the glaciers has signi cantly increased during the observation period. Increasing temperatures, result of the signi cant increase of the GHGs and pollutants in the atmosphere, drive the glacier melting in the study area. If the situation continues in the future, the glaciers may disappear altogether in the Himalaya leading to signi cant impact on the regional water supplies, hydrological processes, ecosystem services and transboundary sharing of waters.

Abstract. The study evaluates the global glacier inventories available for the study area viz., RGI, GAMDAM and ICIMOD, with the newly generated Kashmir University Glacier Inventory (KUGI) for three Himalaya basins; Jhelum, Suru and Chenab in the north-western Himalaya, comprising of 2096 glaciers spread over an area of 3300 km2. The KUGI was prepared from the Landsat data supplemented by Digital Elevation Model, Google Earth images and limited field surveys. The KUGI comprises of 154 glaciers in the Jhelum, 328 in the Suru and 1614 in the Chenab basin, corresponding to the glacier area of 85.9 ± 11.4 km2, 487 ± 16.2 km2 and 2727 ± 90.2 km2 respectively. The investigation revealed that most of the glaciers in the study area are

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