An estimate of glacier melting contribution to inland lakes on Tibetan Plateau

Abstract:

As it is known that continental glacier melting dramatically in a warmer climate and its mass loss contribute to the sea level rise, however, there are lots of inland lakes that receives glacier melting contributions to some extent, it is still not known how much melting water from glaciers to lakes overall on a global and regional view. On the Tibetan Plateau, there are four inland basins in contrast to six external catchments at the marginal plateau. With the same reference system, co-registration and bias/offsets correction, DEMs and ICESat/GLAS data were used to calculate glacier surface elevation changes, which includes the historical DEM at 1:250,000 in 1970s, SRTM DEM and ICESat/GLAS over the whole Tibetan Plateau. According to the 1st glacier inventory database by each glacier in different basins, glacier surface elevation changes were calculated, and glacier mass changes were evaluated. It shows that, for external catchments, glacier mass change was totalled by -9.5 ± 3.6 Gt a^-1 during 1970s-2000, it was more negative during 2003-2009 (-14.9 ± 6.9 Gt a^-1). It shows more melting glacier water runs into the sea in recent decade. However, it was obviously less than some previous studies in HMA, e.g. Gardner et al., 2013, glacier contributed to sea level rise by 26±12 Gt a^-1 .While for internal basins overall, glacier mass change was totalled by -7.6 ± 2.3 Gt a^-1 during 1970s-2000, however, it was less negative during 2003-2009 (-3.05± 1.4 Gt a^-1). It seems that precipitation has increased in inland Tibet and there might be less glacier melting mass runs into inland lakes in recent decade.