Cryosphere-fed rivers

Cryosphere-fed rivers drain glacier, snow, and permafrost landscapes and are characterized by glacial, nival, pluvial and mixed hydrological regimes. Such river systems originate from high-mountain areas and polar regions, and transport water, sediment, nutrients, and organic carbon downstream, underpinning the freshwater and coastal ecosystems and supporting the lives of more than one-third of the world's population. In response to the amplified climate change, accelerating glacier-snow melt and permafrost thaw, the cryosphere-fed rivers are overall becoming warmer, wider and muddier associated with markedly increasing river turbidity and suspended sediment concentrations. In this talk, I will present the observed and modelled changes in cryosphere-fed rivers and examine their implications for channel mobility and the carbon cycle across both High Mountain Asia and the pan-Arctic. To better assess the impacts of changing climate on the functions and services of river ecosystems in strategically important cold regions, I highlight the pressing need to integrate multiple-sourced river observations, to develop empirical, physics-based, and AI-based river flux models, and to promote interdisciplinary scientific collaboration. The innovative system approach would best come from the creation of an interdisciplinary collaborative initiative, where geomorphologists, climatologists, ecologists, glaciologists, permafrost scientists, hydrologists, and civil engineers work together to establish an integrated cryosphere-water-sediment-carbon-ecology observation platform that facilitates the mechanism understanding and development of novel and powerful models. Furthermore, dialogues and collaboration between international scientists, stakeholders, local communities, and policymakers would help to bridge the gaps between state-of-the-art scientific findings and practicable adaptation strategies.