Evaluating Connections Between Terminus Type and Seasonal Surface Velocity Variability of High Mountain Asia Glaciers with the ITS_LIVE Glacier Velocity Dataset

Glaciers in high mountain Asia (HMA) are important seasonal water resources and potential geo-hazards to over 500 million people living throughout the Indian subcontinent. Understanding the trajectories of these glaciers in a warming climate is critical to the development of climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies. Enhanced mass loss from lake-terminating glaciers relative to land-terminating glaciers is well-documented. Recent work has also observed distinct glacier surface velocity variability associated with terminus type. Glacier surface velocities represent an important metric for better understanding HMA glaciers: they convey information about glacier dynamics and the overall 'health' of a glacier, and developments in satellite remote sensing capabilities and post-processing algorithms have made available large ice surface velocity datasets with global coverage, dense temporal resolution, and data-contributions from multiple satellite sensors. This work uses the Inter-Mission Time Series of Land Ice Velocity and Elevation (ITS_LIVE) dataset to characterize seasonal patterns in surface velocity variability of lake-terminating and land-terminating glaciers in sub-regions across HMA. The results illustrate which seasons dominate the dynamical differences between glaciers of different terminus types, which will offer insight into seasonal aspects of glacier-lake relationships within this system and how these may vary across different topographic and climatic settings.