Glacier anomaly over the western Kunlun Mountains, Northwestern Tibetan Plateau, since the 1970s

• Published in: Journal of Glaciology
• Main Authors: YETANG WANG, SHUGUI HOU, BAOJUAN HUAI, WENLING AN, HONGXI PANG, YAPING LIU
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press 2018
• Subjects: glacier changes; Tibetan plateau; western Kunlun Mountains; Environmental sciences; GE1-350; Meteorology. Climatology; QC851-999; Journal of Glaciology
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2018.53; https://doaj.org/article/40b87f917ce94c73997e3eea49d793e4

Western Kunlun Mountain (WKM) glaciers show balanced or even slightly positive mass budgets in the early 21st century, and this is anomalous in a global context of glacier reduction. However, it is unknown whether the stability prevails at longer time scales because mass budgets have been unavailable before 2000. Here topographical maps, Shuttle Radar Topography Mission and Landsat data are used to examine the area and surface elevation changes of glaciers on the WKM since the 1970s. Heterogeneous glacier behaviors are observed not only in the changes of length and area, but also in the spatial distribution of surface elevation changes. However, on average, glacier area and elevation changes are not significant. Glaciers reduce in the area by 0.07 ± 0.1% a−1 from the 1970s to 2016. Averaged glacier mass loss is −0.06 ± 0.13 m w.e. a−1 from the 1970s to 1999. These findings show that the WKM glacier anomaly extends back at least to the 1970s.