New observations confirm continued rapid warming in the Arctic, driving many of the changes underway in the region, including loss of sea ice and glacier coverage, as well as changes in terrestrial and marine ecosystems.

Glaciers in the Satluj river basin in western Himalaya are likely to lose 33% of their area by 2050 and 81% by the end of the century, under Representative Concentration Pathway - RCP 8.5 scenario, based on the output from CNRM-CM5 and GFDL-CM3 climate models respectively.

If current trends continue, some of the lower-altitude glaciers of the tropical Andes could lose between 78 and 97% of their volume by the end of the century, reducing the region’s available freshwater resources. These alarming data are from the Water Atlas launched by UNESCO during the COP24 in Katowice (Poland) in december 2018.

Continuous seismic observations across the Ross Ice Shelf reveal ubiquitous ambientresonances at frequencies >5 Hz. These firn-trapped surface wave signals arise through wind and snowbedform interactions coupled with very low velocity structures.

Over the last 50 years more than 90 % of the excess heat excess accumulated in the climate system because of greenhouse gas emissions has been stored in the ocean. The rest has been warming the atmosphere and continents, and melting sea and land ice.

Shimla: As experts shared a stage to discuss impacts of climate change on mountain ecosystems, it emerged that it’s high time to come up with mitigation strategies to sustain livelihood of farmers

Deposition and accumulation of light-absorbing carbonaceous aerosol on glacier surfaces can alter the energy balance of glaciers. In this study, 2 years (December 2014 to December 2016) of continuous observations of carbonaceous aerosols in the glacierized region of the Mt. Yulong and Ganhaizi (GHZ) basin are analyzed. The average elemental carbon (EC) and organic carbon (OC) concentrations were 1.51±0.93 and 2.57±1.32 µg m−3, respectively.

Many glaciers in the northwest of High Mountain Asia (HMA) show an almost zero or positive mass balance, despite the global trend of melting glaciers. This phenomenon is often referred to as the “Karakoram anomaly,” although strongest positive mass balances can be found in the Kunlun Shan mountain range, northeast of the Karakoram.

Original Source

This report provides comprehensive information about the glacial lakes of five major river basins of the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) — Amu Darya, Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Irrawaddy, including Mansarovar Interior Basin — representing the year 2005, which helps to fill the data gap of glacial lakes information in the region.

Worldwide glacier retreat and associated future runoff changes raise major concerns over the sustainability of global water resources, but global-scale assessments of glacier decline and the resulting hydrological consequences are scarce. Here we compute global glacier runoff changes for 56 large-scale glacierized drainage basins to 2100 and analyse the glacial impact on streamflow.

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