Recent surging event of a glacier on Geladandong Peak on the Central Tibetan Plateau

• Published in: Journal of Glaciology
• Main Authors: Junli Xu, Donghui Shangguan, Jian Wang
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press 2021
• Subjects: Geladandong Peak; glacier surging; surface velocity changes; Environmental sciences; GE1-350; Meteorology. Climatology; QC851-999; Journal of Glaciology
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2021.86; https://doaj.org/article/cfea759561254b00a177e7cc9a34cc88

Few surges on the Central Tibetan Plateau have been reported. Here, we report observations of a recent surging event of the Gangjiaquba Glacier in the Geladandong Peak region using surface velocity and morphology changes that were extracted from Landsat MSS/TM/ETM+/OLI images obtained from 1973 to 2019. The results reveal that the active surge of this glacier initiated at the end of summer in 2014 and terminated in 2016. The surge resulted in a total advance of 500 ± 11.2 m and many fresh crevasses in the surging zone. The maximum velocity was 1100 m a−1 during the active surge phase, which is much smaller than those observed in Karakoram but similar to observations in West Kunlun.