Mass balance reconstruction of Rikha Samba Glacier between 1979 and 2016, Nepal Himalaya
Abstract
Glacier mass balance variability influences regional water resources and helps to understand the glacier response to climate change. Several mass balance studies have started in the Himalayan region since the 1970s, but a time series remains short or incomplete and spatial representatively remains poor. We run an energy mass balance model in order to bridge the temporal gaps in a long-term mass balance series of the Rikha Samba Glacier, a benchmark glacier located in the Hidden Valley, Mustang, Nepal. We force the model with ERA-Interim reanalysis data, adjusted near the glacier terminus for the period 1979 to 2016, the location of an automatic weather station (AWS), to observed meteorological variables (2011-2015) by a linear regression method. The modelled mass balances are validated with the available in-situ measurements for the mass years 1998-99 and 2011-15 and geodetic mass balance from 1979 to 1995 and 1998 to 2010. Modelled results show the glacier has been shrinking moderately with annual glacier-wide mass balance at -0.44 m w.e. a-1 during the study period. Summer temperature, monsoon and westerlies precipitation are the influential climatic variables of an annual mass balance variability of Rikha Samba Glacier.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFM.C51D..07G
- Keywords:
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- 0720 Glaciers;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 0746 Lakes;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 0758 Remote sensing;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 0762 Mass balance 0764 Energy balance;
- CRYOSPHERE