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Anthropogenic climate change drives melting of glaciers in the Himalaya

Environmental Science and Pollution Research volume 29, pages 52732–52751 (2022)Cite this article

Abstract

The Himalayan glaciers provide water to a large population in south Asia for a variety of purposes and ecosystem services. As a result, regional monitoring of glacier melting and identification of the drivers are important for understanding and predicting future cryospheric melting trends. Using multi-date satellite images from 2000 to 2020, we investigated the shrinkage, snout retreat, thickness changes, mass loss and velocity changes of 77 glaciers in the Drass basin, western Himalaya, India. During this period, the total glacier cover has shrunk by 5.31 ± 0.33 km2. The snout retreat ranged from 30 to 430 m (mean 155 ± 9.58 m). Debris cover had a significant impact on glacier melting, with clean glaciers losing ~ 5% more than debris-covered glaciers (~ 2%). The average thickness change and mass loss of glacier have been − 1.27 ± 0.37 and − 1.08 ± 0.31 m w.e.a−1, respectively. Because of the continuous melting and the consequent mass loss, average glacier velocity has reduced from 21.35 ± 3.3 m a−1 in 2000 to 16.68 ± 1.9 m a−1 by 2020. During the observation period, the concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs), black carbon (BC) and other pollutants from vehicular traffic near the glaciers increased significantly. Increasing temperatures, caused by a significant increase in GHGs, black carbon and other pollutants in the atmosphere, are driving glacier melting in the study area. If the current trend continues in the future, the Himalayan glaciers may disappear entirely, having a significant impact on regional water supplies, hydrological processes, ecosystem services and transboundary water sharing.

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Data availability

The datasets used during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The financial assistance received from the Department under the project to accomplish the research is thankfully acknowledged.

Funding

The work was conducted as part of the research grant received from the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, under the research project titled “Centre of Excellence for Glacial Studies in Western Himalaya”.

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  1. Department of Geoinformatics, University of Kashmir, Hazratbal, Srinagar, India

    Shakil Ahmad Romshoo, Khalid Omar Murtaza, Waheed Shah, Tawseef Ramzan, Ummer Ameen & Mustafa Hameed Bhat

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  1. Shakil Ahmad Romshoo
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  2. Khalid Omar Murtaza
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  4. Tawseef Ramzan
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Contributions

Shakil Ahmad Romshoo: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, supervision, manuscript writing with inputs from KOM; Khalid Omar Murtaza: data curation and analysis, methodology, investigation, manuscript preparation, writing; Waheed Shah: data curation and analysis; Tawseef Ramzan: data analysis and investigation; Ummer Ameen: data analysis and editing and Mustafa Hameed Bhat: data analysis and editing.

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Correspondence to Shakil Ahmad Romshoo.

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Romshoo, S.A., Murtaza, K.O., Shah, W. et al. Anthropogenic climate change drives melting of glaciers in the Himalaya. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 52732–52751 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19524-0

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Keywords

  • Glacier dynamics
  • Climate change
  • Greenhouse gases
  • Drass Ladakh, Western Himalaya