SCIENTISTS studying glaciers in the world’s highest mountains have discovered how changing climates have affected the speed at which they slide downhill in the vast region known as High Mountain Asia.
Previous studies have revealed that many glaciers have thinned in recent decades, but the effect on the speed of their movement has been poorly understood until now. The new findings could lead to more accurate projections of how their melting could affect global sea levels and the area’s fresh water supplies.
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A team, including researchers from the University of Edinburgh, developed algorithms to analyse almost two million satellite images of glaciers in the region between 1985 and 2017. They found that differences in glacier flow rates could be explained by changes in ice thickness. As glaciers lost ice and thinned, their gravitational pull weakened, causing them to flow more slowly, while the few that gained ice moved faster.
The research, published in the journal Nature Geosciences, was funded by the European Space Agency’s Dragon programme, and also involved researchers from the Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the US and four universities in France.
Lead author Amaury Dehecq, from the Nasa lab, who completed a post-doctorate at the University of Edinburgh and took the above picture of Mera glacier in Nepal, said: “For more than a decade, satellite data have documented that Asia’s high-mountain glaciers are thinning owing to melting. However, it has not been entirely clear how their rate of flow is responding to ice loss.”
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