Climate variability and glacial dynamics in the Himalaya

• Other Authors: Scherler, Dirk
• Language: English
• Published: Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek 2010
• Subjects: 550; 74.21; 38.82; 14; geo ggo; Greenland; Antarc*; Antarctica; glacier
• Online Access: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-49871; http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2011/4987/pdf/scherler_diss.pdf; http://d-nb.info/101234021X/34; http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2011/4987

In the high mountains of Asia, glaciers cover an area of approximately 115,000 kmø and constitute one of the largest continental ice accumulations outside Greenland and Antarctica. Their sensitivity to climate change makes them valuable palaeoclimate archives, but also vulnerable to current and predicted Global Warming. This is a pressing problem as snow and glacial melt waters are important sources for agriculture and power supply of densely populated regions in south, east, and central Asia. Successful prediction of the glacial response to climate change in Asia and mitigation of the socioeconomic impacts requires profound knowledge of the climatic controls and the dynamics of Asian glaciers. However, due to their remoteness and difficult accessibility, ground-based studies are rare, as well as temporally and spatially limited. We therefore lack basic information on the vast majority of these glaciers. In this thesis, I employ different methods to assess the dynamics of Asian glaciers on multiple time scales. First, I tested a method for precise satellite-based measurement of glacier-surface velocities and conducted a comprehensive and regional survey of glacial flow and terminus dynamics of Asian glaciers between 2000 and 2008. This novel and unprecedented dataset provides unique insights into the contrasting topographic and climatic controls of glacial flow velocities across the Asian highlands . Univ., Diss.--Potsdam, 2010 lzar: Langzeitarchivierung gewährleistet