Elsevier

Journal of Hydrology

Volume 489, 10 May 2013, Pages 180-188
Journal of Hydrology

Characteristics of melt water discharge in the Glacier No. 1 basin, headwater of Urumqi River

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2013.03.013Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Global warming has resulted in loss of mass and volume of most alpine glaciers.

  • Mountain glacial runoff plays a critical role in the water cycle.

  • The melt water discharge is indirectly affected by air temperature.

  • This study mainly discusses the characteristics of the daily glacial runoff cycle.

  • The monthly mean daytime discharge was generally greater than the nighttime discharge.

Abstract

Characteristics of the daily melt water discharge cycle and the relation between melt water discharge, air temperature, and precipitation are analyzed based on observation data during 2001–2005 in the Glacier No. 1 basin at the headwater of the Urumqi River, Tianshan Mountains (hereafter, Glacier No. 1). The results indicate that the daytime and nighttime discharges were less during the preliminary stage of melting in May, and became strong following the ablation period (July–August). The daytime and nighttime discharges in the same month varied year-over-year, and the daily discharge cycles in different months of the summer were dissimilar.

The mean daytime/nighttime discharges were somewhat related to the mean nighttime air temperature (Tn), but were not significantly related to the amount of precipitation. In the daily cycle of average discharges in the summer months during 2001–2005, the maximum discharges occurred in the afternoons and evenings, and the minimum discharges occurred in the mornings. The daily discharge peaks lagged behind the time of maximum melting (maximum air temperature) on selected clear-weather days in different months in different years. This was related to the melt water flow distance inside and underneath the glacier and the structure of the internal drainage net, and may also have been influenced by the weather prior to and after the observed consecutive clear-weather days.

The monthly mean daytime discharge was generally greater than the nighttime discharge, primarily because cloudy and rainy weather and lower air temperatures led to less melt water, and precipitation could not make up the loss of discharge from melt water. Daytime melt water contributed only slightly to nighttime discharge due to the short time lag caused by melt water flow distance.

Introduction

Global warming has resulted in loss of mass and volume of most alpine glaciers. Small glaciers are highly sensitive to changes in air temperature and precipitation, and their runoff has contributed to approximately one-quarter to one-third of the 7 cm rise in sea level that took place during the last century (IPCC, 2007). Consequently, detailed individual glacial runoff observation is imperative for the evaluation of glacier recession and changes in water resources on regional. Mountain regions play a critical role in the water cycle, storing water in the form of snow and ice mainly during the cold/wet season, and releasing it as melt water during the dry/warm season when it is greatly needed (Gino et al., 2009). Glaciers, especially mountain glaciers, are sensitive to climatic change (Li et al., 2007, Zhou et al., 2010). Since the 20th century, most of the global mountain glaciers have begun to retreat with climate warming, and the trend of retreating has sped up in the past 20 years. These influences melt water discharge and much research has shown that this is indirectly affected by air temperature.

In Glacier No. 1, the delay characteristics of melt water discharge were studied by Kang (1991) with the dye tracer method. The long-term characteristics, extremum discharge, and the causes of discharge change have also been discussed (Han et al., 2003, Han et al., 2005, Han et al., 2010). The relationship between the 0 °C layer height and the stream flow of the Urumqi River in the period of spring snowmelt was researched by Guang et al. (2010). Yang et al. (2012) applied the HBV model to simulate the runoff the Glacier No.1 at the Headwater of Urumqi River, while the degree-day model was used to calculate ice and snow melt. Using measured hydro-meteorological data during 1980–2006 and five glacier area topographic maps as the model input, the daily runoff of the watershed were simulated. The results showed that the degree-day factor and the glacier ice volume and area affected the melt runoff. In other regions the characteristics of runoff in the Tarim River basin and Yarkand River basin were analyzed by Gao et al., 2010a, Gao et al., 2010b. Peter et al. (2003) discussed the effect of different processes and time-scales on the glacier melt drainage and concluded that short-term storage concerns diurnal effects of drainage through the glacier including routing through snow, firn and en- and subglacial pathways. Hock, 1998, Hock, 1999, Hock, 2003 modeled glacier melt and discharge, then simulated the distributed temperature-index ice and snow melt model, and analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of different temperature-index model. However, the studies on change characteristics and delaying characteristics of daytime and nighttime average discharge are few. This paper aims to study the characteristics of daytime and nighttime average discharge and the relation between discharge and air temperature and precipitation with a high time resolution so that it can make it clear which factor is dominated.

Section snippets

Site description, data sets and method

Glacier No. 1 has an elevation range of 3730–4486 m a.s.l. and is located in the headwater of the Urumqi River, Tianshan, China (43°05′N, 86°49′E) (Fig. 1). It is a small valley glacier with two branches, the east and west branches. These two branches became separated into two small dependent glaciers in 1994 due to continued glacier shrinkage. The length and area in 2000 (length 2.2 km; area 1.733 km2) decreased compared with that in 1962 (length 2.4 km; area 1.950 km2) (Jiao et al., 2004). The

Characteristics of daytime and nighttime average discharges in Glacier No. 1

As displayed in Fig. 2a, Fig. 2b, Fig. 2c, the variation of discharge generally had trends similar to air temperature. Interestingly, during times of considerable of precipitation the discharge did not increase obviously; on the contrary, the mean daily discharge declined sharply due to the reduced temperature on the overcast days. Section 3.4 discusses the diurnal variation in discharge on clear-weather days as it offsets the effect of precipitation.

The causes of variation in mean daytime and nighttime discharge

To determine the factors that influence mean daytime and nighttime discharge levels, we selected the mean daytime and nighttime discharges in particular months that had certain remarkable characteristics.

Conclusion and discussion

Changes in the monthly mean daytime and nighttime discharges at Glacier No. 1 during the summer months of 2001–2005 are obvious. They both increased during that time, with the melting becoming strong (except in 2004, when the mean nighttime discharge decreased in August). In addition, the monthly mean daytime discharges were all greater than the monthly mean nighttime discharges from June to August (except in June 2002).

As for the monthly mean daytime and nighttime discharges in the same mouth

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41271035), the Special Trade Project for Commonweal of Water Resource (Grant No. 200701046), and the Ministry of Water Resources public sector funding for scientific research and special projects (No. 2007SHZ1-46). The authors thank all those colleagues who worked on hydrological and glacial observations at the Tianshan Glacier Station during 1958–2011.

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