Surface ponds on debris-covered glaciers, High Mountain Asia

This project will involve fieldwork, terrestrial and satellite remote sensing, and numerical modelling to investigate the role of ponds and lakes, and their associated ice cliffs, on the melting of debris-covered glaciers across High Mountain Asia. It will build on recent collaborative work between SPRI and ETH, Zurich, which focused exclusively on the Langtang catchment, Nepal, to include other areas of contrasting glacier surface, topography, and climate. Specific ponds on particular glaciers will be monitored in situ for their filling & draining behaviour & energy budget characteristics (radiative & turbulent energy transfer with the atmosphere, within the water, & with adjacent ice cliffs & debris covered bottoms). The measurements will be used to improve / validate existing small-scale pond process models. Terrestrial and/or airborne (drone) optical imagery will be used to monitor variations in pond extent, & the imagery & in situ measurements will be used to develop algorithms for calculating pond depths, so that variable pond volumes can be calculated at the glacier scale. This information will be combined with satellite remote sensing (optical - Landsat & Sentinel 2; & radar - Sentinel 1) to estimate spatially and temporally varying pond areas, depths and volumes across large regions. This, boundary condition will be used together with downscaled regional climatologies to estimate the role of ponds and lakes on glacier mass balance across HMA. Training will be provided in: Field instrumentation; Terrestrial and airborne structure-from-motion; Optical and radar image processing; Numerical modelling; Programming (MATLAB, JavaScript, Python, Google Earth Engine); Glaciology; Field Safety.