The high Arctic archipelagos around the globe are among the most strongly glacierized landscapes on Earth apart from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Over the past decades, the mass losses from land ice in the high Arctic regions have contributed substantially to global sea level rise. Among these regions, the archipelago of Svalbard showed the smallest mass losses. However, this could change in the coming decades, as Svalbard is expected to be exposed to strong climate warming over the 21st century.

The Himalayan glaciers feed major Asian river systems sustaining the lives of more than 800 million people. Though the rates of retreat of individual glaciers are uncertain, on the whole the Himalayan glaciers have been losing mass at an increasing rate over the past few decades. With the changing climate, glaciers will continue to shrink and the rates of retreat may increase even further. This may lead to the formation of moraine dammed glacial lakes, which can cause outburst floods upon failure of the dam, catastrophic to human life and infrastructure downstream.

Changes in the hydrology of high-altitude catchments may have major consequences for downstream water supply. Based on model projections with a higher spatiotemporal resolution and degree of process complexity than any previous intercontinental comparative study, we show that the impacts of climate change cannot be generalized. These impacts range from a high climatic sensitivity, decreasing runoff, and significant seasonal changes in the Central Andes of Chile to increasing future runoff, limited seasonal shifts, but increases in peak flows in the Nepalese Himalaya.

A method is developed for determination of levoglucosan at trace concentration levels in complex matrices of snow and ice samples. This method uses an injection mixture comprising acetonitrile and melt sample at a ratio of 50/50 (v/v). Samples are analyzed using ultra-performance liquid chromatography system combined with triple tandem quadrupole mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS). Levoglucosan is analyzed on BEH Amide column (2.1 mm×100 mm, 1.7 um), and a Z-spray electrospray ionization source is used for levoglucosan ionization.