Downstream impacts of climate induced glacier change in High Mountain Asia

High Mountain Asia (HMA) is often considered the third pole of the world due to the large glacier presence. The seasonal glacier melt water provides the necessary resource for agriculture affecting about a billion people. In this work we aim to provide an integrated framework for the entire HMA region, suitable for understanding changes in glacier mass and associated streamflow in response to recent and future climate combining extensive modeling with relevant glacier data products from remote sensing. Specifically we use a) visible and radar remote sensing products to derive glacier volume changes, snow line altitudes and debris; b) apply a regional climate model with unprecedented spatial resolution to elucidate the regional-scale monsoon-driven climate dynamics with focus on precipitation patterns across the HMA region, c) model recent glacier changes and forecast future glacier evolution, and d) quantify the hydrological response to climate and glacier changes and forecast how those changes impact human water availability downstream of HMA. With this project we integrate high-resolution modeling of the climate heterogeneity in HMA with regional-scale glacier-hydrological modeling specifically adjusted to HMA and informed by a suite of observations from in-situ and satellite-derived data.