Despite their extreme elevation, glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau are losing mass in response to
atmospheric warming, the pattern of which purportedly reflects regional contrasts in climate.
Here we examine the evolution of glaciers along ∼500 km of the Tanggula Shan, CentralEastern Tibetan Plateau…
Globally glaciers are rapidly shrinking, endangering the sustainability of melt water and altering the regional hydrology. Understanding long-term glacier response to climate change and the influence of non-climatic attributes like morpho-topographic factors on ice loss is of high relevance…
Accurate estimates of glacier surface elevation changes are paramount for various aspects of the study of the cryosphere, from glacier flow and thickness estimates to hydrological forecasts and projections of sea-level-rise. We present a novel probabilistic framework to filter outliers and estimate uncertainties in glacier surface elevation changes computed from the subtraction of digital elevation models (DEM)…
Himalayan glaciers have been shrinking and losing mass rapidly since 1970s with an enhanced rate after 2000. The shrinkage is, however, quite heterogeneous and it is important to document individual glacier characteristics and their changes at the basin scale..
Multi-temporal glacier inventories provide key information about the glaciers, their characteristics, and changes and are inevitable for glacier modelling and investigating geodetic mass changes. However, to date, no consistent multi-emporal glacier inventory for the whole of the Karakoram exists, negatively affecting the monitoring of spatio-temporal variations in glaciers’ geometric parameters and their related applications…
The panoramic cameras (PCs) on board Hexagon KH-9 (KH-9PC) satellite missions from 1971–1984 captured very high-resolution stereo imagery with up to 60 cm spatial resolution. This study explores the potential of this imagery for glacier mapping and change estimation…
As Himalayan Glaciers melt, a water crisis looms in South Asia.
Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) are a major concern throughout High Mountain Asia, where societal impacts can extend far downstream. This is particularly true for transboundary Himalayan basins, where risks are expected to further increase as new lakes develop…
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…
The Corona KH-4 reconnaissance satellite missions acquired panoramic stereo imagery with high spatial resolution of 1.8–7.5 m from 1962-1972. The potential of 800,000+ declassified Corona images has not been leveraged due to the complexities arising from handling of panoramic imaging geometry, film distortions and limited availability of the metadata required for georeferencing of the Corona imagery…
HIgh Mountain Asia has the largest volume of glacier ice outside the polar regions and is considered the water tower of Asia.The se glaciers provide drinking and irrigation water for millions of people as well as ecosystems in and beyond the mountain ranges, and are especially important in drought-affected regions…
±±±The Himalaya plays a vital role in regulating the freshwater availability for nearly a billion people living in the Indus, Ganga, and Brahmaputra River basins. Due to climate change and constantly evolving human-hydrosphere interactions, including land use/cover changes, groundwater extraction, reservoir or dam construction, water availability has undergone significant change, and is expected to change further in the future…
Rock glaciers are landforms related to permafrost creep that are sensitive to climate variability and change. Their spatial distribution and kinematic behaviour can be critical for managing water resources and geohazards in periglacial areas…
We present geodetic mass-balance estiates for tn glaciers (22.6 ± 1.1 km2) around Volcan Domuyo between 1962 and 2020 (and 46 glaciers between 1984 and 2020), derived from airborne, ASTER and Pleiades imagery. Overall, we find a slightly negative mass balance (-0.15 ± 0.09 m w.e. a-1) for the entire 1962-2020 time span.
Global warming-induced melting and thawing of the cryosphere are severely altering the volume and timing of water supplied from High Mountain Asia, adversely affecting downstream food and energy systems that are relied on by billions of people…
The Hindu Kush–Karakoram–Himalayan system, named the Third Pole because it is the largest global store of frozen water after the polar regions, provides a reliable water supply to almost 2 billion people…
Tobias Bolch participated in a UK-Swiss cryosphere event organized by the Brithish Embassy Berne at Jungfraujoch in Switzerland.
Tobias Bolch has been identified as “Highly Cited Researcher” in the field “Geosciences” Web of Science/Clarivate Analytics. In 2021, about 0.1 % of the World’s researchers in 22 reearch fields and across multiple fields, have earned this exclusive distinction.. Only about 143 researchers were identified in the filed of Geosciences.