Glacier changes during the last forty years in the Tarim Interior River basin, northwest China

By comparing digitized glacier outlines from the Chinese Glacier Inventory (CGI) during the 1960s–1970s and Landsat Enhance Thematic Mapper (ETM+) images from 1999 to 2001, we investigated changes for about 7665 alpine glaciers among 11665 glaciers in seven sub-basins of the Tarim Interior River basin (TIRB). The results showed that the total glacier area was reduced by 3.3% from the 1960s/1970s to 1999/2001 and area losses for 1–5 km2 glaciers accounted for 48.3% of the total glacier area loss in the TIRB. However, the glacier area reductions varied from 0.7% to 7.9% among the seven sub-basins of the TIRB during the study period. The glacier area changing with altitude showed that the maximum contribution of area shrinkage occurred at 4900–5400 m. Data from 25 meteorological stations in the TIRB showed increases in both the annual mean air temperature and annual precipitation during 1960–2000. This indicates that the glacier shrinkage in the TIRB over the last 40 years was largely due to regional climate warming that enhanced glacier ablation and overcame the effects of increased precipitation on the glacier mass balance.