Thirteenth International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Abstract

Glaciers in the Ladakh region are very small with areas ranging between 0.5 to 2 km and are located on northwest and northeast facing slopes. Glaciers of Ladakh are located above 5200 m AMSL and have a relatively smaller size, their response to climate change is expected to be more intense, direct, and predictable. The event like flash floods of 2010 provide ample evidence of such hydrological changes happening here due to climate change. Our studies indicate that glaciers in NW Himalayas show lower shrinkage than the glaciers in the eastern part, while glaciers in the Karakoram region show long-term irregular behavior with frequent glacier advances and possible slight mass gain in the recent years . The glaciated area in the region decreased by about 14 % from 96.4 to 82.6 km2 and the average ice front retreat amounted to 125 m. The ice cover loss showed high decadal variability with the maximum shrinkage between 1991 and 2002. The glaciers in the region are also retreating despite being in a very high altitude cold-arid region between the Karakoram and Western Himalayas and they are smaller glaciers in this region are more sensitive to the climate variability. The climate variability on mass balance and discharge in the stream show a decreasing trend and their contribution of Stok stream to the Indus River is varying a lot in recent years. This situation leads to the creation of numerous artificial glaciers (snow harvesting) to manage the water resource for local agricultural needs