Abstract
Streamflow in high-mountain Asia is influenced by meltwater from snow and glaciers, and determining impacts of climate change on the region’s cryosphere is essential to understand future water supply. Past and future changes in seasonal snow are of particular interest, as specifics at the scale of the full region are largely unknown. Here we combine models with observations to show that regional snowmelt is a more important contributor to streamflow than glacier melt, that snowmelt magnitude and timing changed considerably during 1979–2019 and that future snow meltwater supply may decrease drastically. The expected changes are strongly dependent on the degree of climate change, however, and large variations exist among river basins. The projected response of snowmelt to climate change indicates that to sustain the important seasonal buffering role of the snowpacks in high-mountain Asia, it is imperative to limit future climate change.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 591-597 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Nature Climate Change |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue number | 7 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jul 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This study was financially supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences within the Pan-Third Pole Environment framework (grant agreement no. XDA20100300), by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 676819) and by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research under the Innovational Research Incentives Scheme VIDI (grant agreement 016.181.308). We thank H. Lievens for providing the snowdepth data prior to publication and J. Norris for providing the High Asia high-resolution WRF downscaling that was developed by the Climate Variations and Change research group at the University of California Santa Barbara.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
Funding
This study was financially supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences within the Pan-Third Pole Environment framework (grant agreement no. XDA20100300), by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 676819) and by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research under the Innovational Research Incentives Scheme VIDI (grant agreement 016.181.308). We thank H. Lievens for providing the snowdepth data prior to publication and J. Norris for providing the High Asia high-resolution WRF downscaling that was developed by the Climate Variations and Change research group at the University of California Santa Barbara.
