Acceleration of ice loss across the Himalayas over the past 40 years

The similar magnitude and acceleration of ice loss across the Himalayas suggests a regionally coherent climate forcing, consistent with atmospheric warming and associated energy fluxes as the dominant drivers of glacier change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 5th Assessment Report estimates that mass loss from glaciers contributed more to sea-level rise than the ice sheets during 1993–2010 (0.86 mm year −1 versus 0.60 mm year −1 , respectively), yet uncertainties for the glacier contribution are three times greater ( 1 ). As a first approximation of the consistency between observed glacier mass balances and available temperature records, we estimate the energy required to melt the observed ice losses and conservatively estimate the atmospheric temperature change that would supply this energy via longwave radiation to the glaciers, using a simple energy balance approach (Materials and Methods).

Source: advances.sciencemag.org