Hot spots of glacier mass balance variability in Central Asia

The Tien Shan and Pamir mountains host over 28,000 glaciers providing essential water resources for increasing water demand in Central Asia. A disequilibrium between glaciers and climate affects meltwater release to Central Asian rivers, challenging the region's water availability. Previous research has neglected temporal variability. We present glacier mass balance estimates based on transient snowline and geodetic surveys with unprecedented spatiotemporal resolution from 1999/00 to 2017/18. Our results reveal spatiotemporal heterogeneity characterized by two mass balance clusters: (a) positive, low variability, and (b) negative, high variability. This translates into variable glacial meltwater release (≈1–16%) of annual river runoff for two watersheds. Our study reveals more complex climate forcing‐runoff responses and importance of glacial meltwater variability for the region than suggested previously.
Key Points Annual glacier mass balance for Central Asia (1999/00–2017/18) is derived by combining transient snowlines, geodetic surveys, and modelingStrong spatiotemporal heterogeneity with contrasting patterns of mass gain and loss are foundHot spots of heterogeneous mass balance variability are associated with highly variable glacier melt water runoff