Dataset Information

Contrasting glacier responses to recent climate change in high-mountain Asia.

ABSTRACT: Recent studies of Asian glaciers have shown that glaciers in eastern Karakoram and West Kunlun have been slightly gaining mass while those in nearby Jammu Kashmir and Himalayas are losing mass, at rates of more than 0.5 m w.e.yr-1 and about 0.3 m w.e.yr-1, respectively. Two possible explanations have been proposed for this difference in glacier behaviour: spatial heterogeneity in climate change (climatic forcing) or differing glacier responses to climate change (glacier response). However, neither explanation has strong supporting evidence. Here, we examine the glacial response by calculating the mass-balance sensitivity to temperature change in high-mountain Asia. In support of the glacier-response explanation, we find a strong correlation between observed glacier surface-elevation changes and mass-balance sensitivity of glaciers. The high coefficient of determination (R2 = 0.61) suggests that spatially heterogeneous mass-balance sensitivity has more explanatory power than regionally different climate change for the recent contrasting glacier fluctuations in the high mountain Asia.

SUBMITTER: Sakai A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5651914 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Contrasting glacier responses to recent climate change in high-mountain Asia.

Sakai Akiko A Fujita Koji K

Scientific reports 20171020 1

Recent studies of Asian glaciers have shown that glaciers in eastern Karakoram and West Kunlun have been slightly gaining mass while those in nearby Jammu Kashmir and Himalayas are losing mass, at rates of more than 0.5 m w.e.yr<sup>-1</sup> and about 0.3 m w.e.yr<sup>-1</sup>, respectively. Two possible explanations have been proposed for this difference in glacier behaviour: spatial heterogeneity in climate change (climatic forcing) or differing glacier responses to climate change (glacier res ...[more]

PMID: 29057960

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Project description:BackgroundModels that predict changes in the abundance and distribution of fauna under future climate change scenarios often assume that ecological niche and habitat availability are the major determinants of species' responses to climate change. However, individual species may have very different capacities to adapt to environmental change, as determined by intrinsic factors such as their dispersal ability, genetic diversity, generation time and rate of evolution. These intrinsic factors are usually excluded from forecasts of species' abundance and distribution changes. We aimed to determine the importance of these factors by comparing the impact of the most recent climate regime change, the late Pleistocene glacial-interglacial transition, on two sympatric, ice-dependent meso-predators, the emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) and Weddell seal (Leptonychotes weddellii).MethodsWe reconstructed the population trend of emperor penguins and Weddell seals in East Antarctica over the past 75,000 years using mitochondrial DNA sequences and an extended Bayesian skyline plot method. We also assessed patterns of contemporary population structure and genetic diversity.ResultsDespite their overlapping distributions and shared dependence on sea ice, our genetic data revealed very different responses to climate warming between these species. The emperor penguin population grew rapidly following the glacial-interglacial transition, but the size of the Weddell seal population did not change. The expansion of emperor penguin numbers during the warm Holocene may have been facilitated by their higher dispersal ability and gene flow among colonies, and fine-scale differences in preferred foraging locations.ConclusionsThe vastly different climate change responses of two sympatric ice-dependent predators suggests that differing adaptive capacities and/or fine-scale niche differences can play a major role in species' climate change responses, and that adaptive capacity should be considered alongside niche and distribution in future species forecasts.

Dataset Information

Contrasting glacier responses to recent climate change in high-mountain Asia.

Publications

Contrasting glacier responses to recent climate change in high-mountain Asia.

Similar Datasets

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