Re-establishing glacier monitoring in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, Central Asia

Abstract

Abstract. Glacier mass loss is among the clearest indicators of atmospheric warming. The observation of these changes is one of the major objectives of the international climate monitoring strategy developed by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). Long-term glacier mass balance measurements are furthermore the basis for calibrating and validating models simulating future runoff of glacierised catchments. This is essential for Central Asia, which is one of the driest continental regions of the Northern Hemisphere. In the highly populated regions, water shortage due to decreased glacierisation potentially leads to pronounced political instability, drastic ecological changes and endangered food security. As a consequence of the collapse of the former Soviet Union, however, many valuable glacier monitoring sites in the Tien Shan and Pamir Mountains were abandoned. In recent years, multinational actors have re-established a set of important in situ measuring sites to continue the invaluable long-term data series. This paper introduces the applied monitoring strategy for selected glaciers in the Kyrgyz and Uzbek Tien Shan and Pamir, highlights the existing and the new measurements on these glaciers, and presents an example for how the old and new data can be combined to establish multi-decadal mass balance time series. This is crucial for understanding the impact of climate change on glaciers in this region.

The Aral Sea Basin

“…a -1 (2011-2016) and reconstructed mass balances confirmed the negative signal for the last decades for these glaciers (−0.30 to −0.43 m w.e. a -1 from 2000 to 2014; Barandun et al 2018;Barandun et al 2015;Hoelzle et al 2017;Kenzhebaev et al 2017;Kronenberg et al 2016). The first mass balance calculations reported moderate mass loss of −0.10 to −0.25 m w.e.…”

“…1 in China (WGMS 2017), neither of which, however, is in the ASB. Efforts to re-establish in situ glacier monitoring of the formerly monitored glaciers located in the ASB and nearby catchments have started since around 2010 through intensive international and national collaboration projects (Hoelzle et al 2017). At present, mass balance is monitored on more than ten glaciers with longer measurement series.…”

“…The region has a total of two permafrost boreholes listed in the GTNP database. 4 Continuous in situ measurements and monitoring in remote mountain areas of CA are challenging due to difficult access, complex topography, financial and logistic constraints, political instability, as well as lack of appropriate infrastructure (Hoelzle et al 2017;Unger-Shayesteh et al 2013). There are very few datasets above 3000 masl and virtually none above 5000 masl.…”

Worldwide Assessment of National Glacier Monitoring and Future Perspectives

“…A well-established monitoring system existed during Soviet times but was almost completely abandoned in the 1990s. Almost 2 decades later, some monitoring programs were resumed, with the support of countries such as Germany, Switzerland, and the United States (Hoelzle et al 2017).…”

Long-range terrestrial laser scanning measurements of summer and annual mass balances for Urumqi Glacier No. 1, eastern Tien Shan, China

“…drilled into the ice, allowing the monitoring of ablation, and snow pits are dug in the area where snow has accumulated to provide net accumulation (Østrem and Brugman, 1991;Xie et al, 1991;Cogley et al, 2011). However, the shortage of long-term financial and human resources and the inaccessibility of remote regions and natural hazards means that ongoing in situ glacier mass-balance measurements are sparse in the Tien Shan, so that only Tuyuksu glacier (northern Tien Shan, Kazakhatan) and Urumqi Glacier No.1 (eastern Tien Shan, China) have long glaciological mass balance series (Hoelzle et al, 2017). In contrast to the extensive in situ measurement networks required for glaciological observations, the geodetic method provides mass balance by repeated surveys of the entire glacier surface terrain, in which two digital elevation models (DEMs) are subtracted to calculate the volume changes and then convert them to mass balance using a density conversion (Zemp et al, 2013;Huss, 2013;Andreassen et al, 2016).…”