Detection of Changes in Glacier Mass Balance Using Satellite and Meteorological Data in Tirungkhad Basin Located in West
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Detection of Changes in Glacier Mass Balance Using Satellite and Meteorological Data in Tirungkhad Basin Located in Western Himalaya Riyaz Ahmad Mir & Sanjay K. Jain & Arun K. Saraf & Ajanta Goswami
Received: 21 October 2012 / Accepted: 5 July 2013 / Published online: 9 October 2013 # Indian Society of Remote Sensing 2013
Abstract Himalayan glaciers and their mass balance are poorly sampled through direct mass balance measurements. Thus, based on Landsat datasets of ETM+ (2000), ETM+ (2006) and TM (2011), mass balance studies of 32 glaciers was carried out using accumulation area ratio (AAR) method in the Tirungkhad river basin, a tributary of Satluj River, located in western Himalayan region. The overall specific mass balance was negative varying from −27 cm (2000) to −41 cm (2011). Out of 32 glaciers, 27 glaciers (81.2 %) showed negative mean mass balance and 5 glaciers (18.7 %) showed positive mean mass balance. Mean of specific mass balance for the year 2000, 2006 and 2011 was found to be −48 cm, −55 cm and −0.61 cm respectively, in case of glaciers with negative mass balance while in case of glaciers with positive mass balance, it was 0.67 cm (2000), 0.56 cm (2006) and 0.47 cm (2011). The investigations suggested a loss of −0.034 km3 of glacial ice for 2000, 0.036 km3 for 2006 and 0.038 km3 for 2011 respectively. The negative mass balance of the glaciers since 2000 correlates well with the increasing trend of annual mean temperature and decreasing trend of pre-cipitation R. A. Mir (*) : A. K. Saraf Department of Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee 247667, India e-mail: [email protected] S. K. Jain National Institute of Hydrology, Roorkee 247667, India A. Goswami Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, Dehradun 248001, India
(snow water equivalent (SWE) and rainfall). Based on Mann Kendall test the temperature and SWE trends were significant at 95 % confidence level, however, the rainfall trend was insignificant. Keywords Mass balance . Accumulation area ratio . Temperature . Snow water equivalent . Tirungkhad basin
Introduction Himalayan glaciers form one of the largest concentrations of ice outside the Polar Regions (Kulkarni and Bahuguna 2001). Almost all the major perennial rivers of Northern India originate from these glaciers. The prediction of future water resources in this region with important social and economical impacts includes the monitoring and measuring of ongoing glacier wastage (Barnett et al. 2005). To evaluate future changes in glaciers under given climatic scenarios, much research is focused to study the glaciers response to increased global warming (Kotlyakov et al. 1991; Seltzer 1993; Haeberli and Beniston 1998; Maisch 2000; IPCC 2001). In the recent decades, global warming has caused shrinkage of most glaciers and ice caps in the world (Dyurgerov and Meier 2000). Therefore, the glaciers are most responsive to climate change among the numerous physical systems on the earth as these often react sensitively to climate change (Oerlemans 1994). Cha
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