1. The evolution of knowledge about the Arctic and its climate 2. Physical characteristics and basic climate features 3. The basic atmospheric and ocean energy budgets 4. The atmospheric circulation 5. Energy exchanges at the surface 6. Precipitation, net precipitation, and river discharge 7. Arctic ocean-sea ice-climate interactions 8. Climate regimes of the Arctic 9. Modeling the Arctic climate system 10. Arctic paleoclimates 11. The uncertain future.

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The Arctic climate system

The mean sea level has been projected to rise in the 21st century as a result of global warming. Such projections of sea level change depend on estimated future greenhouse emissions and on differing models, but model-average results from a mid-range scenario (A1B) suggests a 0.387-m rise by 2100 (refs 1, 2). The largest contributions to sea level rise are estimated to come from thermal expansion (0.288 m) and the melting of mountain glaciers and icecaps (0.106 m), with smaller inputs from Greenland (0.024 m) and Antarctica (- 0.074 m). Here we apply a melt model and a geometric volume model to our lower estimate of ice volume and assess the contribution of glaciers to sea level rise, excluding those in Greenland and Antarctica. We provide the first separate assessment of melt contributions from mountain glaciers and icecaps, as well as an improved treatment of volume shrinkage. We find that icecaps melt more slowly than mountain glaciers, whose area declines rapidly in the 21st century, making glaciers a limiting source for ice melt. Using two climate models, we project sea level rise due to melting of mountain glaciers and icecaps to be 0.046 and 0.051 m by 2100, about half that of previous projections.

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Low sea level rise projections from mountain glaciers and icecaps under global warming

Climate change and glacier retreat in northern Tien Shan (Kazakhstan/Kyrgyzstan) using remote sensing data

This paper seeks to explain evidence of distinctive late- and post-Little Ice Age glacier change in the Karakoram Himalaya and a recent, seemingly anomalous, expansion. Attention is directed to processes that support and concentrate glacier mass, including an all-year accumulation regime, avalanche nourishment, and effects related to elevation. Glacier basins have exceptional elevation ranges, and rockwalls make up the larger part of their area. However, more than 80% of the ice cover is concentrated between 4000 and 5500 m elevation. Classification into Turkestan-, Mustagh-, and Alpine-type glaciers is revisited to help identify controls over mass balance. Estimates of changes based on snowlines, equilibrium line altitudes, and accumulation area ratio are shown to be problematic. Extensive debris covers in ablation zone areas protect glacier tongues. They are relatively insensitive to climate change, and their importance for water supply has been exaggerated compared to clean and thinly covered ...

Glacier Change, Concentration, and Elevation Effects in the Karakoram Himalaya, Upper Indus Basin

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00280276/document

Ob' river discharge from TOPEX/Poseidon satellite altimetry (1992–2002)

The World Atlas of Snow and Ice Resources, scheduled for publication in the late 1980s, is an extensive cartographic summary of current knowledge about snow and ice. Roughly 750 maps organized unde...

V. M. Kotlyakov

Papers

The world atlas of snow and ice resources