Inventory of Glaciers and Glacial lakes and
the Identification of potential Glacial
Lake Outburst Floods(GLOFs) Affected by Global Warming in
the Mountains
of Himalayan Region Pumqu Basin,China Himalaya
Microwave remote
sensing data, NOAA AVHRR, ASTER, MODIS products, Landsat
data, and so on.
WDC for Glaciology and Geocryology, Lanzhou
WDC
for Glaciology and Geocryology, Lanzhou, is the main part of the
World
Data Centre. It is also one of the professional databases
of Chinese scientific
Database. The aims are the
collection, saving, management and analysis on Chinese
Cryosphere Database which includes the Polar Regions and high
Asia Regions.
This
data center also can promote the sharing of
the cryosphere data in the earth science. It would contribute
to the research of the global change, the protection of the
cold and arid regions, the exploitation of the natural
resource, the construction of the projects and the work to
forefend and reduce the disaster.
The most up-to-date data of current status of the cryosphere in China and its changes were summarized in a Global and Planetary Change paper.
X. Li, G. D. Cheng, H. J. Jin, E. S. Kang, T. Che, R. Jin, L. Z. Wu, Z. T. Nan, J. Wang, and Y. P. Shen, 2008: Cryospheric change in China. Global and Planetary Change, 62, 210-218.
This paper provides an overview of the current status of the cryosphere in China and its changes. Up-to-date statistics of the cryosphere in China are summarized based on the latest available data. There are 46,377 glaciers in China, covering an area of 59,425 km2. The glacier ice reserve is estimated to be about 5600 km3 and the annual glacier runoff is about 61.6´109m3. The continuous snow cover extent (>60 days) in China is about 3.4´106 km2 and the maximum water equivalent is 95.9´109 m3 yr-1. The permafrost area in China is about 1.72´106 km2. The total ground ice reserve on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is estimated to be about 10,923 km3. Recent investigations indicated that glacier areas in China have shrunk about 2-10% over the past 45 years. Total glacier area has receded by about 5.5%. Snow mass has increased slightly. Permafrost is clearly degrading, as indicated by shrinking areas of permafrost, increasing depth of the active layer, rising of lower limit of permafrost, and thinning of the seasonal frost depth. Some models predict that glacier area shrinkage could be as high as 26.7% in 2050, with glacier runoff increasing until its maximum in about 2030. Although snow mass shows an increasing trend in western China, in eastern China the trend is toward decreasing snow mass, with increasing interannual fluctuations. Permafrost degradation is likely to continue, with one-third to one-half of the permafrost on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau anticipated to degrade by 2100. Most of the high-temperature permafrost will disappear by then. The permafrost in northeastern China will retreat further northward.
Citing
Data
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Glaciology and Geocryology, at Lanzhou requests that you
acknowledge use of our data sets. Please refer to the
information about data acknowledgment, or contact our User
Services for further information via
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The
information about data acknowledgment:
The ***
data in this paper were provided by the WDC for glaciology and
geocryology, at Lanzhou.
http://wdcdgg.westgis.ac.cn
