A Cryosphere Monitoring Project in the Himalayas
Abstract
The Cryosphere Monitoring Project (CMP) has been initiated by ICIMOD (International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development) with the aim to gain more knowledge about the cryosphere in the Himalayas and to build capacities in Nepalese organisations. The CMP is carried out in collaboration with the Kathmandu University, Tribhuvan University, the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology and the Water and Energy Commission Secretariat, and is sponsored by the Royal Norwegian Embassy. The CMP has a multilevel and integrative approach and consists of the following five components: (1) glacier monitoring, (2) assessment of current and future water resources at catchment and sub-basin scale, (3) multi-level remote sensing based observations for glacier and snow monitoring, (4) strengthening ICIMOD as regional knowledge hub for cryospheric information, (5) capacity building of Nepalese organisations. The glacier monitoring component includes field-based mass balance, geometry and glacier flow measurements on two clean and one debris-covered glacier and their analysis, as well as snow cover measurements. The in-situ glacier measurements promote process understanding, provide a refined temporal resolution of mass balance data and data for calibration of glacio-hydrological models. To assess current water resources, meteorological and hydrological measurements are initiated and the run-off is calculated with glacio-hydrological and snow-melt models for the catchments of the selected glaciers. Future water availability will be assessed by down-scaling regional climate model (RCM) data that is applied to the glacio-hydrological model. Remote sensing data is used to improve spatial information about the glacier distribution by refining glacier inventories, and to calculate the geodetic mass balance for the selected glaciers to complement the directly measured glacier mass balance. Additionally, the operation of a MODIS satellite receiving station is planned to obtain near real time snow cover data for the entire Hindu Kush-Himalayas. The Cryosphere Knowledge Hub will be realised with a interactive web-based platform, regular bulletin board services and workshops to ensure knowledge sharing especially within the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region. Capacity building of Nepalese organisations is implemented by the setup of a MSc programme for Research in Glaciology at Kathmandu University for twenty students, which are trained together with staff from governmental organisations in field measurements, glacio-hydrological modelling and remote sensing techniques. The integrative approach of the project ensures a long-term and sustainable monitoring of the cryosphere on several strategic levels.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2011
- Bibcode:
- 2011AGUFM.C13A0734S
- Keywords:
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- 0720 CRYOSPHERE / Glaciers;
- 0758 CRYOSPHERE / Remote sensing;
- 0762 CRYOSPHERE / Mass balance;
- 1827 HYDROLOGY / Glaciology