Monitoring glacier surges in the Kongur Tagh area of the Tibetan Plateau using Sentinel-1 SAR data

A regionally resolved inventory of High Mountain Asia surge-type glaciers, derived from a multi-factor remote sensing approach

“…We nonetheless demonstrated that the differences between distinct HMA regions lie in the number of surges rather than the duration of individual surges. This result contrasts with the findings of Dowdeswell et al (1991) stating that active phases in the Pamirs typically last for 1 to 2 years, and disputes the claims of Zhu et al (2021) than Tien Shan covers a greater range of active phase duration than other regions in HMA.…”

“…In this study, we present distributions of surge active phase duration derived from yearly ITS_LIVE velocity data. The moments of the presented distributions (here the percentiles) are in line with previous studies focusing on each individual region (Quincey et al, 2011;Yasuda and Furuya, 2015;Quincey et al, 2015;Bhambri et al, 2017;Lv et al, 2019;Goerlich et al, 2020;Paul, 2020;Zhu et al, 2021). We nonetheless demonstrated that the differences between distinct HMA regions lie in the number of surges rather than the duration of individual surges.…”

“…documented in understudied regions of HMA such as the Tibetan Plateau (King et al, 2021;Xu et al, 2021;Zhu et al, 2021) and Western Kunlun Shan Furuya, 2013, 2015;Chudley and Willis, 2019;Muhammad and Tian, 2020). Many of these studies have focused on the modern satellite era and highlighted the non-uniform distribution surge-type glaciers in HMA, giving a more accurate representation of the prevalence of surge-type glaciers compared to ground based efforts (Kotlyakov et al, 2008;Imran and Ahmad, 2021).…”

The Spatio-Temporal Patterns of Glacier Activities in the Eastern Pamir Plateau Investigated by Time Series Sub-Pixel Offsets From Sentinel-2 Optical Images

“…In the hydrological control mechanism, excess meltwater formed by warming temperatures or other factors can't drain out quickly due to changes or obstructions in the subglacial drainage system [67,68]. After investigation the surging glaciers in the study area, such as Karayaylak Glacier (region b) and Jangmanjiar Glacier (region f) are mainly caused by a combination of thermal and hydrological trigger mechanisms [25,26,69,70]. As a result, we consider that because the average monthly temperature in the study area from June to August exceeds 0°C and precipitation exceeds 60 mm, the input of surface meltwater increases the water pressure in the subglacial drainage system, causing the drainage system to fail and thus triggering glacier surges.…”

Reply on RC1

“…Surge-type glaciers throughout HMA have received significant attention in the past decades, with many regional inventories being generated, especially in the Karakoram (Hewitt, 1969;Kotlyakov et al, 1997;Barrand and Murray, 2006;Quincey et al, 2011;Copland et al, 2011;Bolch et al, 2017), Pamirs (Osipova et al, 1998;Kotlyakov et al, 2008;Shangguan et al, 2016;Lv et al, 2019;Goerlich et al, 2020) and Tien Shan (Osmonov et al, 2013;Häusler et al, 2016;Mukherjee et al, 2017;Zhou et al, 2021). More recently, glacier surges have been documented in understudied regions of HMA such as the Tibetan Plateau (King et al, 2021;Xu et al, 2021;Zhu et al, 2021) and Western Kunlun Shan Furuya, 2013, 2015;Chudley and Willis, 2019;Muhammad and Tian, 2020). Many of these studies have focused on the modern satellite era and highlighted the non-uniform distribution surge-type glaciers in HMA, giving a more accurate representation of the prevalence of surge-type glaciers compared to ground based efforts (Kotlyakov et al, 2008;Imran and Ahmad, 2021).…”