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Change in glacier area and thickness in the Tomur Peak, western Chinese Tien Shan over the past four decades

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Abstract

This paper looks at glacier area change in the Tomur Peak for the 1964/71–2000 and 2000–2011 periods. The results show that the total area of the selected 78 glaciers has decreased from 555.45 km2 in 1964/71 to 530.39 km2 in 2000, and further reduced to 521.89 km2 in 2011. Overall, the selected glaciers have lost 4.50% of their surface area between 1964/71 and 2000, and have lost 1.60% more between 2000 and 2011. The area reduction rate of the 78 glaciers increased from 0.12%/a during 1964/71–2000 to 0.13%/a during 2000–2011. In addition, this paper describes a method for estimating the ice surface elevation change using the SRTM (2000) and elevation data generated from topographic maps (1964/71) to quantify the ice thickness change for the 1964/71–2000 period. The surface elevation for about 73.50% of grid area decreased, mostly in the glacier ablation zone. The overall average thickness loss is 22.35 m which yields an annual loss of 0.60 m/a.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the funds for the Creative Research Groups of China (41121001), Project for Incubation of Specialists in Glaciology and Geocryology of National Natural Science Foundation of China (J1210003/J0109), National Natural Science Foundation of China (41340014), and National Basic Research Program of China (2013CBA01801). The authors are very grateful to USGS (US Geological Survey, http://www.usgs.gov) for the Landsat image data and China Meteorological Data Sharing Service System for meteorological data. They also greatly acknowledge Mathias Bavay for help with English polishing on the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Cryosphere Science, Cold and Arid Region Environment and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Lanzhou, 730000, China.

    Huai Baojuan, Li Zhongqin, Wang Wenbin & Jin Shang

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.

    Huai Baojuan

  3. Geography and Environment College of Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou, 730070, China.

    Li Zhongqin & Sun Meiping

  4. School of Urban Economics and Tourism Culture, Lanzhou City University, Lanzhou, 730070, China.

    Li Kaiming

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  1. Huai Baojuan
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  2. Li Zhongqin
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  4. Wang Wenbin
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  5. Jin Shang
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Correspondence to Huai Baojuan.

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Baojuan, H., Zhongqin, L., Meiping, S. et al. Change in glacier area and thickness in the Tomur Peak, western Chinese Tien Shan over the past four decades. J Earth Syst Sci 124, 353–363 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-015-0541-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-015-0541-5

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