Retreat and geodetic mass changes of Zemu Glacier, Sikkim Himalaya, India, between 1931 and 2018
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Retreat and geodetic mass changes of Zemu Glacier, Sikkim Himalaya, India, between 1931 and 2018 Irfan Rashid 1
&
Ulfat Majeed 1
Received: 26 May 2020 / Accepted: 23 October 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract This study assessed changes in the snout, area, and mass of the largest glacier, Zemu, located in Sikkim Himalaya using earth observation data of 87 years from 1931 to 2018. GlabTop model was used to estimate the glacier thickness and potential lakes that could develop in the future. The study assumes importance since massive hydropower infrastructure is being set up without incorporating any knowledge about the retreating glaciers in the region. Between 1931 and 2018, the glacier lost 30.67% (± 2.87%) at a rate of 0.35% per year. The snout of the glacier retreated by ~ 797 m (± 19.7 m) between 1931 and 2018 at a rate of 9.1 m a−1. The rate of retreat increased to ~ 20 m a−1 very recently from 2014 to 2018. The geodetic mass balance estimates suggest that the glacier lost 6.78 Gt (± 2.05 Gt) of mass at a rate of 84.8 Mt a−1 between 1931 and 2012. The mass loss accelerated at 276.5 Mt a−1 between 2000 and 2012. The GlabTop results suggest a mean glacier thickness of 117 m and the formation of a potential future proglacial lake with an area, volume, and peak discharge capacity of 25.3 ha, 3.53 million m3, and 3522 m3s−1, respectively, by the end of this century. Keywords Zemu Glacier . Glacier recession . Geodetic mass changes . GlabTop model
Introduction The Hindukush-Karakoram-Himalaya (HKH) including Tibetan Plateau, often referred to as the Third Pole, hosts the highest number of glaciers outside the Polar Regions (Yao et al. 2012). These glaciers are critical for the socioeconomic development of the region (Nüsser et al. 2019; Mukherji et al. 2019) given the fact that every sector of the economy including water supply to 1.5 billion people (Immerzeel et al. 2010), irrigation (Momblanch et al. 2019), food security (Biemans et al. 2019), and hydropower (Wada et al. 2019) is dependent on melt-waters originating from these Asian Water Towers. The amount and timing of melt-water Communicated by Juan Ignacio Lopez Moreno Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-02001717-3. * Irfan Rashid [email protected]; [email protected] 1
Department of Geoinformatics, University of Kashmir, Hazratbal Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir 190006, India
from these glaciers are strongly related to precipitation and temperature (Barnett et al. 2005). There is a plethora of literature, models, and observations, suggestive of the statistically significant atmospheric warming (Pepin et al. 2015; Basha et al. 2017) and erratic precipitation regimes (Palazzi et al. 2013; Singh and Goyal 2017) across the HKH region. The ever increasing temperatures (Bhutiyani et al. 2007; Kulkarni et al. 2013) have resulted in faster melting of glacial ice (Lutz et al. 2014) that has not only impacted th
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