Karakoram temperature and glacial melt driven by regional atmospheric circulation variability

Nathan Forsythe (), Hayley J. Fowler, Xiao-Feng Li, Stephen Blenkinsop and David Pritchard
Additional contact information
Nathan Forsythe: Newcastle University, School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences
Hayley J. Fowler: Newcastle University, School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences
Xiao-Feng Li: Newcastle University, School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences
Stephen Blenkinsop: Newcastle University, School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences
David Pritchard: Newcastle University, School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Nature Climate Change, 2017, vol. 7, issue 9, 664-670

Abstract: Abstract Identifying mechanisms driving spatially heterogeneous glacial mass-balance patterns in the Himalaya, including the ‘Karakoram anomaly’, is crucial for understanding regional water resource trajectories. Streamflows dependent on glacial meltwater are strongly positively correlated with Karakoram summer air temperatures, which show recent anomalous cooling. We explain these temperature and streamflow anomalies through a circulation system—the Karakoram vortex—identified using a regional circulation metric that quantifies the relative position and intensity of the westerly jet. Winter temperature responses to this metric are homogeneous across South Asia, but the Karakoram summer response diverges from the rest of the Himalaya. We show that this is due to seasonal contraction of the Karakoram vortex through its interaction with the South Asian monsoon. We conclude that interannual variability in the Karakoram vortex, quantified by our circulation metric, explains the variability in energy-constrained ablation manifested in river flows across the Himalaya, with important implications for Himalayan glaciers’ futures.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3361 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcli:v:7:y:2017:i:9:d:10.1038_nclimate3361

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/

DOI: 10.1038/nclimate3361

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Climate Change is currently edited by Bronwyn Wake

More articles in Nature Climate Change from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().