Open Access
An inventory of glacial lakes in the Third Pole region and their changes in response to global warming
Yongjiu Dai,Guoqing Zhang,T. Yao,Hongjie Xie +3 more
- Vol. 2015
Reads0
Chats0
TLDR
In this paper, the first glacial lake in- ventories for the Third Pole were conducted for ~1990, 2000, and 2010 using Landsat TM/ETM+ data.Abstract:
article i nfo No glacial lake census exists for the Third Pole region, which includes the Pamir-Hindu Kush-Karakoram- Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau. Therefore, comprehensive information is lacking about the distribution of and changes in glacial lakes caused by current global warming conditions. In this study, the first glacial lake in- ventories for the Third Pole were conducted for ~1990, 2000, and 2010 using Landsat TM/ETM+ data. Glacial lake spatial distributions, corresponding areas and temporal changes were examined. The significant results are as follows. (1) There were 4602, 4981, and 5701 glacial lakes (N0.003 km 2 ) covering areas of 553.9 ± 90, 581.2 ± 97, and 682.4 ± 110 km 2 in ~1990, 2000, and 2010, respectively; these lakes are primarily located in the Brahmaputra (39%),Indus (28%), and AmuDarya (10%) basins. (2) Small lakes (b0.2 km 2 ) are more sensitive to climate changes. (3) Lakes closer to glaciers and at higher altitudes, particularly thoseconnected to glacier ter- mini, have undergone larger area changes. (4) Glacier-fed lakes are dominant in both quantity and area (N70%) and exhibit faster expansion trends overall compared to non-glacier-fed lakes. We conclude that glacier meltwa- ter may play a dominant role in the areal expansion of most glacial lakes in the Third Pole. In addition, the pat- terns of the glacier-fed lakes correspond well with warming temperature trends and negative glacier mass balance patterns. This paper presents an important database of glacial lakes and provides a basis for long-term monitoring and evaluation of outburst flood disasters primarily caused by glacial lakes in the Third Pole.read more
Citations
More filters
Different glacier status with atmospheric circulations in Tibetan Plateau and surroundings
TL;DR: This paper found that the most intensive glacier shrinkage is in the Himalayan region, whereas glacial retreat in the Pamir Plateau region is less apparent, due to changes in atmospheric circulations and precipitation patterns.
Journal ArticleDOI
Lake volume and groundwater storage variations in Tibetan Plateau's endorheic basin
Guoqing Zhang,Guoqing Zhang,Tandong Yao,Tandong Yao,C. K. Shum,Shuang Yi,Kun Yang,Kun Yang,Hongjie Xie,Wei Feng,Tobias Bolch,Tobias Bolch,Lei Wang,Lei Wang,Ali Behrangi,Hongbo Zhang,Weicai Wang,Weicai Wang,Yang Xiang,Jinyuan Yu,Jinyuan Yu +20 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined annual changes in lake area, level, and volume during 1970s-2015 and found that increased net precipitation contributes the majority of water supply for the lake volume increase, followed by glacier mass loss and ground ice melt due to permafrost degradation.
Journal ArticleDOI
A regional-scale assessment of Himalayan glacial lake changes using satellite observations from 1990 to 2015
TL;DR: In this paper, the current distribution of glacial lakes across the entire Himalaya and monitor the spatially-explicit evolution of the lakes over five time periods from 1990 to 2015 using a total of 348 Landsat images at 30-m resolution.
Journal ArticleDOI
Regional differences of lake evolution across China during 1960s–2015 and its natural and anthropogenic causes
Guoqing Zhang,Guoqing Zhang,Tandong Yao,Tandong Yao,Wenfeng Chen,Guoxiong Zheng,C. K. Shum,C. K. Shum,Kun Yang,Kun Yang,Shilong Piao,Shilong Piao,Yongwei Sheng,Shuang Yi,Junli Li,Catherine M. O'Reilly,Shuhua Qi,Samuel S. P. Shen,Hongbo Zhang,Yuanyuan Jia +19 more
TL;DR: Wang et al. as mentioned in this paper examined multi-decadal lake area changes in China during 1960s-2015, using historical topographic maps and >3831 Landsat satellite images, including lakes as fine as ≥ 1 km2 in size.
Journal ArticleDOI
Rapid worldwide growth of glacial lakes since 1990
Dan H. Shugar,Dan H. Shugar,Aaron Burr,Umesh K. Haritashya,Jeffrey S. Kargel,C. Scott Watson,Maureen C. Kennedy,Alexandre R. Bevington,Richard Betts,Richard Betts,Stephan Harrison,Katherine Strattman,Katherine Strattman +12 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the role of these lakes as terrestrial storage for glacial meltwater is unknown and not accounted for in global sea level assessments, and they use scaling relations to estimate that global glacier lake volume increased by around 48%, to 156.5 km3, between 1990 and 2018.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Landsat-based inventory of glaciers in western Canada, 1985-2005
TL;DR: In this article, a semi-automated method extracted glacier extents from Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) scenes for 2005 and 2000 using a band ratio (TM3/TM5).
Journal ArticleDOI
Permafrost degradation and its environmental effects on the Tibetan Plateau: A review of recent research
TL;DR: A significant portion of the Tibetan Plateau is underlain by permafrost, and is highly sensitive to climate change Observational data from recent Chinese investigations on permfrost degradation and its environmental effects in the Tibetan region indicate that a large portion of Tibet has experienced significant warming since the mid-1950s The air temperature increase is most significant in the central, eastern, and northwestern parts of the Plateau The warming trend in the cold season was greater than that in the warm season.
Journal ArticleDOI
Monitoring lake level changes on the Tibetan Plateau using ICESat altimetry data (2003-2009)
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used ICESat altimetry data to provide precise lake elevations of the Tibetan Plateau (TP) during the period of 2003-2009, which is the first time that precise lake elevation data are provided for the 111 lakes.
Journal ArticleDOI
Elevation dependency of recent and future minimum surface air temperature trends in the Tibetan Plateau and its surroundings
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the temporal trends in monthly mean minimum temperatures from 116 weather stations in the eastern Tibetan Plateau and its vicinity during 1961-2006, and also analyzed projected climate changes in the entire Tibetan plateau and its surroundings from two sets of modeling experiments under future global warming conditions.
Journal ArticleDOI
The second Chinese glacier inventory: data, methods and results
Wanqin Guo,Shiyin Liu,Li Xu,Lizong Wu,Donghui Shangguan,Xiaojun Yao,Junfeng Wei,Weijia Bao,Pengchun Yu,Qiao Liu,Zongli Jiang +10 more
TL;DR: The second Chinese glacier inventory was compiled based on 218 Landsat TM/ETM+ scenes acquired mainly during 2006-10 as mentioned in this paper, where the widely used band ratio segmentation method was applied as the first step in delineating glacier outlines, and then intensive manual improvements were performed.