Abstract
Understanding the spatial–temporal changes in glacier mass balance and associated drivers on the Tibetan Plateau (TP) is important for predicting future water supplies and glacier-related hazards. However, the comparative study of changes in glacier mass balance in different regions of the same glacierized massif on the TP remains scarce. Combining the reconstructed detailed mass balance time-series from 1970 to 2015 for Ningchan No.1 Glacier in the eastern Qilian Mountains and Qiyi Glacier in the western Qilian Mountains using the energy and mass balance model in this work with the published mass balance data from different glaciers, we find that interannual changes in glacier mass balance are broadly similar in different regions of the Qilian Mountains. These interannual changes are primarily driven by variations in ablation-season (June–September) air temperature (Ta), which impact albedo and melt by changing snowfall and incoming longwave radiation (Lin). We link such interannual mass balance variability to the combination of changes in atmospheric circulation over Europe and changes in sea surface temperature (SST) in the Northwest Pacific during the ablation season which can cause the changes in Ta across the Qilian Mountains. In addition, we find a trend of increasingly negative glacier mass balance across the Qilian Mountains from 1970–1994 compared to 1995–2015. This interdecadal trend is driven by higher ablation-season Ta through increasing Lin and through increasing precipitation falling as rain. Lastly, higher glacier mass loss in the east than in the west Qilian Mountains from 1970–1994 and 1995–2015 was mainly caused by lower glacier area-altitude distribution, as well as a reduction in ablation-season precipitation in the eastern Qilian Mountains.
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Data availability
We thank the National Tibetan Plateau/Third Pole Environment Data Center (http://data.tpdc.ac.cn/) and China Meteorological Administration (http://data.cma.cn/) for providing the climate data and some glacier-related data used herein. We are grateful to Xuejie Gao at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences for providing CN05.1 data. JRA-55 reanalysis data sets are freely distributed on the National Center for Atmospheric Research (http://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds628.1/). The monthly sea surface temperature (SST) from the Hadley Centre Sea Ice and Sea Surface Temperature dataset (HadISST) can be downloaded from https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisst/. The SRTM DEM data and Landsat data are provided by the US Geological Survey (https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/). This study is jointly funded by the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program (2019QZKK0201), the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant XDA2006020102), National Natural Science Foundation of China (grants. 41971092, 41961134035, 41771085 and 41801034), the “Key Research Programs in Frontier Sciences” of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant QYZDY-SSW-DQC003), the National Science Foundation Paleo Perspectives on Climate Change (Award 1502919) and National Key Research and Development Project (2019YFC1509102). We appreciate the anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constrctive comments.
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Funding
This work was funded by Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program (Grant no. 2019QZKK0201); Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant no. XDA2006020102); National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 41971092, 41971092, 41771085 and 41801034); “Key Research Programs in Frontier Sciences” of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant no. QYZDY-SSW-DQC003); National Science Foundation Paleo Perspectives on Climate Change (Grant no. 1502919); National Key Research and Development Project (2019YFC1509102).
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Zhu, M., Yao, T., Thompson, L.G. et al. What induces the spatiotemporal variability of glacier mass balance across the Qilian Mountains. Clim Dyn 59, 3555–3577 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06283-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06283-4