| 1. |
- Ehlers, Todd A., et al.
(författare)
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Past, present, and future geo-biosphere interactions on the Tibetan Plateau and implications for permafrost
- 2022
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Ingår i: Earth-Science Reviews. - : Elsevier BV. - 0012-8252. ; 234
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Interactions between the atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere are most active in the critical zone, a region extending from the tops of trees to the top of unweathered bedrock. Changes in one or more of these spheres can result in a cascade of changes throughout the system in ways that are often poorly understood. Here we investigate how past and present climate change have impacted permafrost, hydrology, and ecosystems on the Tibetan Plateau. We do this by compiling existing climate, hydrologic, cryosphere, biosphere, and geologic studies documenting change over decadal to glacial-interglacial timescales and longer. Our emphasis is on showing present-day trends in environmental change and how plateau ecosystems have largely flourished under warmer and wetter periods in the geologic past. We identify two future pathways that could lead to either a favorable greening or unfavorable degradation and desiccation of plateau ecosystems. Both paths are plausible given the available evidence. We contend that the key to which pathway future generations experience lies in what, if any, human intervention measures are implemented. We conclude with suggested management strategies that can be implemented to facilitate a future greening of the Tibetan Plateau.
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| 2. |
- Gardner, Alex S., et al.
(författare)
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A Reconciled Estimate of Glacier Contributions to Sea Level Rise : 2003 to 2009
- 2013
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Ingår i: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 340:6134, s. 852-857
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Glaciers distinct from the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets are losing large amounts of water to the world's oceans. However, estimates of their contribution to sea level rise disagree. We provide a consensus estimate by standardizing existing, and creating new, mass-budget estimates from satellite gravimetry and altimetry and from local glaciological records. In many regions, local measurements are more negative than satellite-based estimates. All regions lost mass during 2003-2009, with the largest losses from Arctic Canada, Alaska, coastal Greenland, the southern Andes, and high-mountain Asia, but there was little loss from glaciers in Antarctica. Over this period, the global mass budget was -259 +/- 28 gigatons per year, equivalent to the combined loss from both ice sheets and accounting for 29 +/- 13% of the observed sea level rise.
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| 3. |
- Pfeffer, W. Tad, et al.
(författare)
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The Randolph Glacier Inventory : a globally complete inventory of glaciers
- 2014
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Ingår i: Journal of Glaciology. - 0022-1430 .- 1727-5652. ; 60:221, s. 537-552
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Randolph Glacier Inventory (RGI) is a globally complete collection of digital outlines of glaciers, excluding the ice sheets, developed to meet the needs of the Fifth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for estimates of past and future mass balance. The RGI was created with limited resources in a short period. Priority was given to completeness of coverage, but a limited, uniform set of attributes is attached to each of the similar to 198 000 glaciers in its latest version, 3.2. Satellite imagery from 1999-2010 provided most of the outlines. Their total extent is estimated as 726 800 +/- 34 000 km(2). The uncertainty, about +/- 5%, is derived from careful single-glacier and basin-scale uncertainty estimates and comparisons with inventories that were not sources for the RGI. The main contributors to uncertainty are probably misinterpretation of seasonal snow cover and debris cover. These errors appear not to be normally distributed, and quantifying them reliably is an unsolved problem. Combined with digital elevation models, the RGI glacier outlines yield hypsometries that can be combined with atmospheric data or model outputs for analysis of the impacts of climatic change on glaciers. The RGI has already proved its value in the generation of significantly improved aggregate estimates of glacier mass changes and total volume, and thus actual and potential contributions to sea-level rise.
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| 4. |
- Zhang, Guoqing, et al.
(författare)
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Extensive and drastically different alpine lake changes on Asia's high plateaus during the past four decades
- 2017
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Ingår i: Geophysical Research Letters. - 0094-8276. ; 44:1, s. 252-260
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Asia's high plateaus are sensitive to climate change and have been experiencing rapid warming over the past few decades. We found 99 new lakes and extensive lake expansion on the Tibetan Plateau during the last four decades, 1970–2013, due to increased precipitation and cryospheric contributions to its water balance. This contrasts with disappearing lakes and drastic shrinkage of lake areas on the adjacent Mongolian Plateau: 208 lakes disappeared and 75% of the remaining lakes have shrunk. We detected a statistically significant coincidental timing of lake area changes in both plateaus, associated with the climate regime shift that occurred during 1997/1998. This distinct change in 1997/1998 is thought to be driven by large-scale atmospheric circulation changes in response to climate warming. Our findings reveal that these two adjacent plateaus have been changing in opposite directions in response to climate change. These findings shed light on the complex role of the regional climate and water cycles, and provide useful information for ecological and water resource planning in these fragile landscapes.
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