Himalaya–Karakoram (H–K) region hosts large number of high altitude lakes but are poorly gauged by in-situ water level monitoring method due to tough terrain conditions and poor accessibility. After the campaigns of ICESat during 2003–2009, now it is possible to achieve lake levels at decimetre accuracy. Therefore, in present study, high altitude lake levels were observed using ICESat/GLAS altimetry in H–K between 2003 and 2009 to generate baseline information. The study reveals that out of 13 lakes, 10 lakes show increasing trend of water levels at different rate (mean rate 0.173 m/y) whereas three lakes unveiled decreasing trend (mean rate −0.056 m/y). Out of five freshwater lakes, four lakes show an increasing trend of their level (mean rate 0.084 m/y) whereas comparatively six salt lakes (out of seven salt lakes) exhibited ~3 times higher mean rate of lake level increase (0.233 m/y). These observed lake level rise can be attributed to the increased melt runoffs (i.e., seasonal snow and glacier melts) owing to the enhanced mean annual and seasonal air temperature during past decade in north-western (NW) Himalaya. Further, varied behaviours of lake level rises in inter- and intra-basins suggest that the local climatic fluctuations play prominent role along with regional and global climate in complex geographical system of NW Himalaya.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the Director, Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Dehradun and Director General, Chhattisgarh Council of Science and Technology, Raipur for their support for this work. Priyeshu Srivastava thanks Prof. Sridhar Anandakrishnan of Penn State University, USA for his insightful comments and suggestion on earlier version of manuscript. Rakesh Bhambri thanks Eero Rinne of School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, UK for extracting ICESat tracks in shape files. They also thank U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) for providing GLAS/ICESat altimetry data at no cost.
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SRIVASTAVA, P., BHAMBRI, R., KAWISHWAR, P. et al. Water level changes of high altitude lakes in Himalaya–Karakoram from ICESat altimetry. J Earth Syst Sci 122, 1533–1543 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-013-0364-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-013-0364-1