Skip to main content
European Commission logo print header
Contenu archivé le 2022-12-23

Evaluating the recent and future climate change and glacier dynamics in the mountains of Southern Siberia

Objectif

Valley glaciers are highly sensitive to climatic change. Constituting only around 3% of the Earth's glaciated area, they are of critical importance because they may be melting rapidly affecting regional water balance. The state of a valley glacier depends on a balance between input (accumulation) and output of mass (melt) over a period of time. Both are highly sensitive to variations of climate. The climate-glacier dynamics in Siberian mountains have received little scientific study. This is an important gap in knowledge because these mountains are located along a strong west-east climatic gradient moving towards lower precipitation and higher seasonal variations in temperature in the east. This results in considerable uncertainty in the response of the glaciers to climate change along this gradient.

The main objective of the project is to quantify the sensitivity of mountain glaciers to the recent past and future climatic changes and to provide estimates of impacts of glacial melt on regional water balance in response to future climate change scenarios. These objectives will be achieved through the combined use of field investigations, remote sensing, and numerical climate, hydrological, and glacier mass balance modelling. Three mountainous systems will be studied using remote sensing techniques: Altay, Sayans, and Kodar. Satellite remote sensing is a very efficient tool for mapping changes in glacier surface characteristics over large areas. Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+), and ASTER imagery will be used. Glacier terminus location, length, surface area, and proportion of debris-covered ice will be measured for different years.

In two areas, Altay and Kodar, field investigations will be conducted and regional climate change and water balance scenarios will be generated. These two regions have been selected for detailed investigation because (i) they experience different climates; (ii) Altay is one of the main centres of alpine glaciation in Eurasia and long-term mass balance records exist for individual glaciers; (iii) very little is known about climate and glaciers of Kodar. To quantify the climate-glacier-discharge dynamics, meteorological, hydrological, and mass balance data will be collected and analysed at two sites in the Altay and Kodar. We will use PRECIS modelling system based on HadRM3 regional climate model to generate projections of future climate and hydrological conditions initially for the A2 (strong increase in CO2) scenario.

An important advantage of this method is that a vast array of climatic and hydrological variables will be generated for a regular grid with either 50km or 25km horizontal resolution. Numerical climate modelling will provide input data for the modelling of glacier discharge and changes in regional water balance. The project will deliver a comprehensive assessment of climate-glacier-water balance dynamics in Siberian mountains and its results will be made widely available.

Thème(s)

Data not available

Appel à propositions

Data not available

Régime de financement

Data not available

Coordinateur

UNIVERSITY OF READING
Contribution de l’UE
Aucune donnée
Adresse
WHITEKNIGHTS
READING
Royaume-Uni

Voir sur la carte

Coût total
Aucune donnée

Participants (5)