Steinbauer, M; Zeidler, J: Climate Change in the Northern Areas Pakistan - Impacts on glaciers, ecology and livelyhoods, , Gilgit Conservation and Information Center, World Wide Fund for Nature-Pakistan (2008) | |
Abstract:SummaryClimate change is taking place in Northern Areas. For the valley stations like Gilgit, Bunji, Skardu and Gupis an increase in mean temperature was observed for the period 1980 to 2006. The maximum increase of 0.44°C per decade was found in the winter month. Summer temperature however is declining at a rate of 0.26°C per decade. Except of Gupis, no significant (p < 0.05) precipitation trends could be observed over the same period. Gupis had a dramatic increase in precipitation of 157mm per decade. This is a fourfold increase of mean precipitation between 1980 and 2006. Meteorological data for high altitude elevations are unfortunately neither available to the scientific community nor published, even if they exist from two independent sources.The general change of glacier extend is different in the Karakoram compared to observa- tions for the majority of glaciers on the globe. While, in the rest of the world, glaciers are retreating dramatically (Lemke et al. 2007), a large number of glaciers in the Karakoram central ridge are stable or even increasing (Hewitt 2005 and 2007). Remote sensing data evaluated by Haritashya et al. (2007) indicate an advancing or similar terminus position for 45% of the studied glaciers. These glaciers mostly originate above 7000m and have elevation ranges of more than 4500m. They differ in size, elevation and latitude from glaciers that are used to demonstrate contemporary global change in glaciers (WGMS 2008 and Hewitt 2005). The small to medium sized Karakoram glaciers more often than not show retreating tendencies similar to the global pattern. Smiraglia et al. (2007) suggests, that especially debris covered glaciers in the Karakoram could be responsible for the different behavior. download Article |