Description
High Mountain Asia (HMA) hosts the largest concentration of glaciers outside the polar regions and plays a crucial role in supplying freshwater for households and agriculture. Over the past century, global irrigation has expanded nearly fivefold, with Asia accounting for 85% of today’s global irrigation withdrawals. As one of the most impactful land management practices, irrigation can significantly alter regional climate, affecting precipitation patterns and cooling surface air temperatures. These changed weather patterns raise critical questions about how irrigation-driven climate modifications influence glacier dynamics in HMA and its hydrological significance. This study assesses the effects of irrigation expansion-induced climate changes on glaciers in HMA, combining glacier evolution modelling with an ensemble of climate simulations at present-day levels and fixed at early-industrial levels (1901). Our results indicate that without irrigation expansion, glaciers would have lost twice as much volume over the 1985-2014 period. Furthermore, long-term equilibrium experiments reveal that in a world without anthropogenic forcing (i.e. no irrigation and no climate warming) glaciers would have retained four times more volume compared to the real-world scenario and three times more than the no-irrigation case. These findings illustrate the buffering effect of irrigation, reducing 50% of long-term glacier volume loss, highlighting its complex but significant role in controlling glacier response to climate change.| Periode | 10 feb. 2025 |
|---|---|
| Evenementstitel | Global Glacier Modelling Workshop |
| Evenementstype | Workshop |
| Locatie | Oslo, NorwayToon op kaart |
| Mate van erkenning | International |