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We find that the majority of the Indus has seen an increase in snow-water storage. There exists a strong elevation-trend relationship, where high-elevation zones have more positive SWE trends. Negative trends are confined to the Himalayan foreland and deeply-incised valleys which run into the Upper Indus. This implies a temperature-dependent cutoff below which precipitation increases are not translated into increased SWE. Earlier snowmelt or a higher percentage of liquid precipitation could both explain this cutoff. Earlier work found a negative snow-water storage trend for the entire Indus catchment over the time period 1987-2009 (-4 × 10-3 mm/yr). In this study based on an additional seven years of data, the average trend reverses to 1.4 × 10-3. This implies that the decade since the mid-2000s was likely wetter, and positively impacted long-term SWE trends. This conclusion is supported by an analysis of snowmelt onset and end dates which found that while long-term trends are negative, more recent (since 2005) trends are positive (moving later in the year). |
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Microwave radiation
Climate change
Data modeling
Climatology
Satellites
Spatial resolution
Image sensors
