No abstract

The meltwater released by the glaciers in the Aksu-Tarim Catchment, south of Tomur Peak (Central Tien Shan), feeds the Tarim River which is the main artery for the oases at the northern margin of the Taklamakan desert. The correct modeling of the contribution of the glaciers meltwater to the total runoff of the Tarim River is hampered by the lack of mass balance data. Multi-temporal digital terrain models (DTMs) allow the determination of volume changes for large samples of glacier. Here, we present the mass changes for 12 glaciers using 1976 KH- The meltwater released by the glaciers in the Aksu-Tarim Catchment, south of Tomur Peak (Central Tien Shan), feeds the Tarim River which is the main artery for the oases at the northern margin of the Taklamakan desert. The correct modeling of the contribution of the glaciers meltwater to the total runoff of the Tarim River is hampered by the lack of mass balance data. Multi-temporal digital terrain models (DTMs) allow the determination of volume changes for large samples of glacier. Here, we present the mass changes for 12 glaciers using 1976 KH-

Abstract. There is currently no glacial lake inventory data set for the entire high-mountain Asia (HMA) area. The definition and classification of glacial lakes remain controversial, presenting certain obstacles to extensive utilization of glacial lake inventory data. This study integrated glacier inventory data and 668 Landsat TM, ETM+, and OLI images and adopted manual visual interpretation to extract glacial lake boundaries within a 10 km buffer from glacier extent using ArcGIS and ENVI software, normalized difference water index maps, and Google Earth images. The theoretical and methodological basis for all processing steps including glacial lake definition and classification, lake boundary delineation, and uncertainty assessment is discussed comprehensively in the paper. Moreover, detailed information regarding the coding, location, perimeter and area, area error, type, time phase, source image information, and subregions of the located lakes is presented. It was established that 27 205 and 30 121 glacial lakes (size 0.0054–6.46 km2) in HMA covered a combined area of 1806.47±2.11 and 2080.12±2.28 km2 in 1990 and 2018, respectively. The data set is now available from the National Special Environment and Function of Observation and Research Stations Shared Service Platform (China): https://doi.org/10.12072/casnw.064.2019.db (Wang et al., 2019a).

A physically based energy-balance model with improved parameterization of solar radiation for a sloped ice surface has been developed to estimate the backwasting rate of an ice cliff in a debris-covered area. The model has been tested against observations between 5 August and 5 September 2008 on 38 ice cliffs in the debris-covered area of Koxkar glacier, Tuomuer mountain, China. We calculated that the energy-balance model gave a good estimate of the backwasting rates, with errors in the range ±1.96 cm d−1 and root-mean-square errors of 0.99 cm d−1. Errors arising from setting of surface albedo and turbulent flux parameterization were limited. We found that shortwave radiation is the most important heat source for ice-cliff ablation, contributing about 76% of the total heat available for ice melt, while the sensible heat flux provides nearly 24% of the total heat for ice-cliff wastage. The latent heat flux and net longwave radiation are comparatively small according to the model calculation. The mean backwasting rate of ice cliffs in the debris-covered area of Koxkar glacier is estimated at 7.64 m a−1 when the winter ablation is neglected. With this annual backwasting rate and given a mean slope angle of 46.4°, the backwasting of ice cliffs produces about 1.60 × 106 m3 of meltwater, accounting for about 7.3% of the total melt runoff from the debris-covered area.

Abstract. Due to the influence of the Indian monsoon, the Kangri Karpo Mountains in the south-east of the Tibetan Plateau is in the most humid and one of the most important and concentrated regions containing maritime (temperate) glaciers. Glacier mass loss in the Kangri Karpo is an important contributor to global mean sea level rise, and changes run-off distribution, increasing the risk of glaciallake outburst floods (GLOFs). Because of its inaccessibility and high labour costs, information about the Kangri Karpo glaciers is still limited. Using geodetic methods based on digital elevation models (DEMs) derived from 1980 topographic maps from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) (2000) and from TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X (2014), this study has determined glacier elevation changes. Glacier area and length changes between 1980 and 2015 were derived from topographical maps and Landsat TM/ETM+/OLI images. Results show that the Kangri Karpo contained 1166 glaciers with an area of 2048.50 ± 48.65 km 2 in 2015. Ice cover diminished by 679.51 ± 59.49 km 2 (24.9 ± 2.2 %) or 0.71 ± 0.06 % a −1 from 1980 to 2015, although nine glaciers advanced. A glacierized area of 788.28 km 2 , derived from DEM differencing, experienced a mean mass loss of 0.46 ± 0.08 m w.e.