Response of Glaciers to Climate Change in Northwest China

Abstract:

In Northwest China, an extremely dry region, more than 20,000 mountain glaciers are developed. Glacial melt water is vital for local water resources, ecosystem in the lower reaches, peoples’ living and city development there. During the past several decades, due to climate warming, the most glaciers in NW China are in a state of rapid retreating. To obtain the general idea on response of glaciers in that region, Tianshan Glaciological Station, Chinese Academy of Sciences selected more than ten glaciers in six sub-regions along Altai Mountain, Tianshan and Qilian Mountain, respectively, doing in-situ observations. Based on field observation and remote sensing technique, this study has revealed that the area reductions in different regions range between 8.8%~34.2 % during the past four decades. The potential impact of the glacier recession on water resource in future will be spatially different. For the Tarim River, the glacier runoff is estimated to maintain its current level or increase somewhat in next 30~50 years. In the north slope of Tianshan, the glaciers with a size smaller than 1 km2 are most likely to be melted away in next 20~40 years, and those larger than 5 km2 are melting intensively. In eastern Xinjiang, because the number of the glaciers is small and also because the climate is extremely dry, the glacier retreating are causing the water shortage problem. For Ili River and Irtysh River, because they are dominant by snow melt runoff, the impact of the glacier shrinkage and temperature rise would be limited on the quantity of the river runoff, but significant on the annual distribution of the river runoff. For Qilian Mountains, glaciers are quite small. The vanishing of small glacier will have significant impact on local water resources in near future.