Impact of Climate Change on Glacier Mass Balance: Geodetic Mass Balance Study on Kimshung Glacier from 2015 To 2025

Abstract

Abstract

Millions of people depend on glaciers for drinking water, irrigation, and hydropower generation. Being sensitive to warming climate, Himalayan Glaciers lag long term mass balance data. In this study we measure the geodetic mass balance and surface change of Kimshung Glacier, a clean glacier in the central Nepal from the period 2015 to 2025. The method combines DEM differencing of an ASTER DEM from 2015 against a sentinel-1 derived DEM from 2025. The DEM differencing was done after co-registration following Nuth and Kaab (2011). The surface velocity from the ITS_LIVE (from 1990 to 2018) archive and ERA5 (from 1979 to 2024) reanalysis of temperature and precipitation data added the objectives of the study to better understand present glacier scenario. On average, the glacier surface lowered by 8m to 10m, and thinning was strong between 5200m to 5800m. The mean mass balance is found to be −0.64 m w.e. yr-1  with cumulative loss of -6.4 m w. e. over the decade. Glacier area shrank by 1.7% from 3.428 to 3.369 Km2. Peak surface velocity rise from about 5 to 7 m yr-1 in 1990 to about 30 to 32 m yr-1 by 2018. Overall, the results show a steady loss of mass driven by temperature. Saying that, the total estimate has quite a big uncertainty of ±6.3 m w.e. To reduce that uncertainty in future studies, we'll need to use DEMs from the same sensor and combine them with actual field data