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| Titel |
Water Mass Loss of the Himalayas from GRACE, ICESat and SRTM |
| VerfasserIn |
Reginald Muskett |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2010
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 12 (2010) |
| Datensatznummer |
250032360
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| Zusammenfassung |
| The Himalayas and the Tibet Plateau form a region of about 3.4 million square kilometers.
Home to numerous large lakes and tarns (glacier lakes), and to more than 50,000 glaciers and
high-elevation snowfields, this region is the source of the Indus, Ganga, Brahmaputra, and
Yamuna Rivers, the Indo-Gangetic River system. The Himalayan Mountains and associated
ranges form a boundary separating continental air masses associated with the westerlies, and
marine air masses associated with the summer South Asian monsoon. Adverse changes in
water storage / river discharge driven by effects of climate change will impact agriculture,
hydroelectric power facilities, commerce, and the lives of more than 1.3 billion
people. We are investigating water mass loss derived by the Gravity Recovery and
Climate Experiment (GRACE), the ICE, Cloud and land Elevation (ICESat) and the
Shuttle Radar Topograghy Mission (SRTM). In our current analysis we remove
the effects of isostatic glacial adjustment and both retain and remove the annual
cycle of water equivalent mass change for evaluation. Least-squares regression of
GRACE monthly time-series shows the Himalaya region lost 17.9 ± 11.0 km3/yr
water equivalent mass from August 2002 through December 2006 (annual cycle
removed basis). Retaining the annual cycle of water equivalent mass change and
extending the time series for one additional year, the least-squares trend is 9.9 ± 4.7
km3/yr of water equivalent mass loss from August 2002 through December 2007.
Comparison of same-datum ICESat and SRTM elevations above 5000 meters shows snow
surface elevations are decreasing at 1.1 ± 0.7 m/yr from June 2005 through April
2007. We will present updated analyses of the trends of regional water equivalent
mass and elevation changes from GRACE and ICESat - SRTM measurements. |
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