01 Sep Yinsheng Zhang
Yinsheng Zhang, China
Prof. Yinsheng Zhang
Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, CAS
Research Interest: Land surface hydrological processes
Presentation Title: Impacts of snow/glacier variability over the hydrologic regimes in upper Indus River Basin.
Glacierized river basins with insufficient summer rain but abundant in snow- and glacier-melt water, are highly suspected by reduction and seasonal alteration in the annual stream-flows owing to climate change. However, the glacio-hydrological observations and investigations to address the linkage between stream-flow fluctuations and glacier storage changes are still very weak, which also a consequent of controversies like ‘Karakorum Anomaly’ among the scientists concerning the behavior of glaciers in the changing climate. Therefore an investigation to determine the implications of climatic variability over the hydrological regimes of Karakorum and Western Himalayan basins is carried out by employing long term in-situ hydro-meteorological and as well as Remote sensing data. The study reveals that both the basins receives significant winter precipitation therefore the snow cover area reaches to 85% and 58% in Astore and Hunza basins respectively. The predominant contribution from snow and glacier melt to runoff was also estimated as 73% and 83% in Astore and Hunza basin respectively. Similarly, the observed persistent summer cooling and increased precipitation resulted in slightly positive glacier mass storage change of ~8.4-9.5mmyr-1 during the period of 1966-2010 in Hunza basin (Karakoram), whereas stability was observed in Astore basin’s (Western Himalaya) glacier storage area at least since 1995. Although previous projections on the feedback of global climate change over glacierized basins suggested short-term increases followed by a sharp decrease in the stream-flows due to the persistent shrinkage of glacier cover area, however, our overall analysis revealed that phenomenon is yet to occurred in both the studied catchments from Karakoram and Western Himalaya, and the current behavior of climatic indicators seems to prolonged its occurrence at least for upcoming few decades particularly in these hydrological regimes.
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