Remote Sensing Monitoring of Advancing and Surging Glaciers in the Tien Shan, 1990–2019

Abstract

The advancing of glaciers is a manifestation of dynamic glacial instability. Glaciers in the Tien Shan region, especially in the Central Tien Shan, show instability, and advancing glaciers have been recently detected. In this study, we used Landsat TM/ETM+/OLI remote sensing images to identify glaciers in the Tien Shan region from 1990 to 2019 and found that 48 glaciers advanced. Among them, thirty-four glaciers exhibited terminal advances, and 14 glaciers experienced advances on the tributary or trunk. Ten of the glaciers experiencing terminal advances have been identified as surging glaciers. These 48 glaciers are distributed in the western part of the Halik and Kungey Mountain Ranges in the Central Tien Shan, and Fergana Mountains in the Western Tien Shan, indicating that the Tien Shan is also one of the regions where advancing and surging glaciers are active. From 1990 to 2019, a total of 169 times advances occurred on 34 terminal advancing glaciers in the Tien Shan region; the highest number of advancing and surging of glaciers occurred in July (26 and 14 times, respectively). With reference to the existing literature and the present study, the surge cycle in the Tien Shan is longer than that in other regions at high latitudes in Asia, lasting about 35–60 years. Surging glaciers in the Tien Shan region may be affected by a combination of thermal and hydrological control. An increase in temperature and precipitation drives surging glaciers, but the change mechanism is still difficult to explain based on changes in a single climate variable, such as temperature or precipitation.