The Tian Shan mountain range stretches across 1,550 miles of central Asia. The researchers used three independent approaches using satellite data, laser altimetry, and glaciological modelling to work out total glacier mass change.
“Currently we’re in the golden part, with comparatively a lot water”, Daniel Farinotti, lead writer of the research at GFZ and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, advised Reuters. “They can balance water between wet and dry years”.
Tian Shan, in particular, has seen its glaciers melting four times faster than the global average, and scientists are concerned that little else could be done, except continue the fight against global warming.
Water from the mountains helps develop crops in lowland areas of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, one of many world’s largest irrigated areas, and China’s north-western Xinjiang area, the specialists wrote.
Despite the importance of this water supply and the growth of populations dependent on it, information about the conditions of glaciers in the Tian Shan is sparse, and estimates of how these glaciers might change in the future have been limited to the past decade. “Results from the three approaches agree well, and allow us to reconstruct a consistent time series of annual mass changes for the past 50 years at the resolution of individual glaciers”, they wrote. Scientists have estimated that nearly 3000 square kilometres of glaciers and an average of 5.4 gigatons of ice per year have been lost since the 1960s.
“Despite their crucial role as a water resource, the dynamics of these glaciers remain poorly understood”. This is particularly important in seasonally arid regions, i.e. regions that have months with virtually no precipitation, since local water supply is then closely linked to meltwater availability.
The pace of glacier retreat noticeably accelerated between the 1970s and the 1980s. A team of researchers from France and Germany suggest half the region’s glaciers could be gone by 2050.
Climate models are expecting hotter summers in the incoming years along the 2,500 kilometers of the Tien Shan mountain range, which puts the glaciers in an even more vulnerable state, according to research studies.
“Since the winter months in the region are very dry and the mountains are that high, glaciers receive most of their snowfalls during summer”, principal investigator Daniel Farinotti said. Farinotti explains. “Because of this an elevated temperature contributes to each, elevated soften and lowered glacier nourishment – and clearly, each contributes to glacier wastage”.
