glaciers

Reaching tipping point? Climate change and poverty in Tajikistan

The people of Tajikistan, a small, mountainous country in Central Asia, are experiencing the impacts of climate change. More frequent droughts and heightened extreme weather conditions are hitting poor communities, eroding their resilience. The country's glaciers are melting, bringing the danger, in the future, of greater water shortages and potential disputes in the wider region. Last...

Implementation of a process-based catchment model in a poorly gauged, highly glacierized Himalayan headwater
The paper presents a catchment modeling approach for remote glacierized Himalayan catchments. The distributed catchment model TACD, which is widely based on the HBV model, was further developed for the application in highly glacierized catchments on a daily timestep and applied to the Nepalese Himalayan headwater Langtang Khola (360 km2). Low laying reference stations are taken for temperature...
Modeled climate-induced glacier change in Glacier National Park, 1850–2100

The glaciers in the Blackfoot–Jackson Glacier Basin of Glacier National Park,Montana, decreased in area from 21.6 square kilometres (km2) in 1850 to 7.4 km2 in 1979. Over this same period global temperatures increased by 0.45ºC (± 0.15ºC).

The authors analysed the climatic causes and ecological consequences of glacier retreat by creating spatially explicit models...

Mapping and morphometric analysis of glaciers in Jotunheimen, South Norway, during the “Little Ice Age” maximum
This study provides mapping and analysis of the maximum glacier extent during the "Little Ice Age" in Jotunheimen, Southern Norway, on a regional scale. Remote sensing techniques were used to map the glacier area at the maximum of the "Little Ice Age" (mid 18th century AD). For validation of the mapping, interpretation of existing glaciochronological...
Monitoring glacier elevation and volume changes with digital photogrammetry and GIS at Gepatschferner Glacier, Austria

Digital elevation models of Gepatschferner in Northern Tyrol, Austria were obtained with digital photogrammetry from high altitude stereo photo pairs and by digitising an analogue topographic glacier map, for 1990 and 1971, respectively. A difference map was calculated to identify regions of glacier elevation increases and decreases corresponding to glacier mass gain and loss. While the...

Karakorum - Hindukush - Western Himalaya: Assessing high-altitude water resources
The high mountains of Central and South Asia provide irrigation water for their adjacent lowlands. The Indus Irrigation Scheme depends on approximately 50% of its runoff originating from snowmelt and glacier melt from the eastern Hindukush, Karakorum and western Himalaya. The Atlas of Pakistan indicates that these mountains gain a total annual rainfall of between 200 and 500 mm, amounts that are...
Snow and glacier cover assessment in the high mountains of Sikkim Himalaya
This study highlights the assessment of snow and glacier cover for possible inferences of global climate change impacts in high mountains like the Himalaya. The test catchment of the River Tista lies in the Sikkim state of the Indian Himalayan region, with steep mountains crossing nearly all ecozones, from subtropical to glacial. River flows are highly fluctuating, especially during the peak...
An assessment of contemporary glacier fluctuations in Nepal's Khumbu Himal using repeat photography

A preliminary study of glacial fluctuations in Sagarmatha (Mt Everest) National Park, Nepal was undertaken in Oct-Nov 2007 using repeat photography. Photographs from scientific and cartographic expeditions to the upper Imja Khola region ca. 1950 were replicated in order to derive a better, empirically-based understanding of what changes had occurred in the region's glaciers during the past...

Recent trends in melting glaciers, tropospheric temperatures over the Himalayas and summer monsoon rainfall over India

There are growing concerns about the impact melting glaciers in the Himalayas will have on about 1.5 billion people of vulnerable densely populated communities in downstream river basins. Yet there is huge uncertainty about how snow and glacial melting in the Himalayan region will continue to respond to climate change, and how such change will affect ecosystems and human well-being. There is a...

GLORIA: A global observation research initiative in alpine environments
The first internationally coordinated initiatives to observe the environment in Alpine regions date back to the 19th century. Around 1880, the first mountain observatories were established on European mountains. Today, the record of their activities provides a meteorological time series covering more than a century. Continuous meteorological measurements on high mountains in other continents...

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