Annapurna’s Fading Ice: Unraveling the Implications of Climate Change on Snowline

Abstract

Abstract

The Annapurna Conservation Area (ACA), situated in the central part of Nepal, comprises certain portions of the Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region. Because of the increasing temperature patterns and irregular precipitation trends, the snowline is highly influenced and shows irregular shifting. The annual, seasonal, and monthly behaviour of the snowline, relating it to the temperature for the time span of 25 years (2000-2025), is studied. Satellite- based platforms, i.e., GEE, deploying the datasets as MODIS and ERA5-land, and SRTM DEM, are preferred for the study. This study points out that the snowline shifts by 38.46m/°C (R²=0.10, p value=0.1165) in the ACA. The season-based analysis of the snowline gives significant results, where it was found that summer reveals negative trends (-7.47m/yr, p-value=0.026) and winter (slope=73.68m/°C, R²=0.53, p-value=0.00) shows strong positive correlation with temperature, whereas the trend was a bit insignificant with a higher p-value in the case of annual snowline elevation. The minimum temperature of ACA is increasing, as a result, the snow persistence is decreasing, impacting the overall hydrological systems. Because of these cryospheric fluctuations, the downstream region’s communities are immensely affected. Declining pure water resources, ecological instability, agricultural loss, fluctuating surface runoff, disruption, and downturn in the tourism sector are some of the socio-economic challenges faced by the locals due to accelerating snowline elevation. This study tries to seal the existing information gaps by performing a long-term study of snow dynamics using remote sensing techniques.