The pulse of the Pamirs: how do the warm summers of 2021 and 2022 fit into the bigger picture?

Autor: Miles, Evan, Shaw, Thomas E., Fiddes, Joel, Ren, Shaoting, Jouberton, Achille, Barandun, Martina, Fugger, Stefan, Saks, Tomas, Kayumov, Abdulhamid, Hoelzle, Martin, Pellicciotti, Francesca
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2023
Zdroj: XXVIII General Assembly of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG)
Popis: Glaciers in the European Alps recorded exceptional melt volumes in the summer of 2022. Impressions from High Mountain Asia also suggested higher-than-usual mass loss. Our observations at seven hotspots in the Pamir mountains highlighted glaciers suffering from small accumulation areas at the end of the balance year, due to reduced winter snowfall and increased summer melt. The glacier mass budget of this mountain range has been regarded as part of the Pamir-Karakoram Anomaly, but the most recent satellite observations suggest that the Karakoram Anomaly is coming to an end. Here, we draw together field and remote sensing observations to assess the severity of Pamir mass loss in recent years, and in the extreme 2022 summer in particular, as compared to the historical baseline. We examine climatic records and reanalyses to establish the degree to which recent years fit within the observed historic seasonal and annual ranges. We compare the recent to historic mass balance measurements at Abramov Glacier, the single long-term monitoring reference glacier for the region. We combine geodetic glacier mass balances surveyed from a variety of sources to consider how well observations agree with one another. We then consider changes to observed glacier surface albedo and surface temperature over the past 20 years based on satellite record. Finally, we examine interannual and decadal changes to on-glacier and catchment snowlines. Taken together, these data sources enable us to link direct meteorological and glaciological conditions to broad spatial and temporal patterns of change across the Pamir mountains.
The 28th IUGG General Assembly (IUGG2023) (Berlin 2023)
Databáze: OpenAIRE