Contrasting patterns of change in snowline altitude across five Himalayan catchments

Sasaki, Orie; Miles, Evan S.; Pellicciotti, Francesca; Sakai, Akiko; Fujita, Koji

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-5283-2025

Articles | Volume 19, issue 11

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-5283-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-5283-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 11

Research article

|

30 Oct 2025

Research article |

| 30 Oct 2025

Contrasting patterns of change in snowline altitude across five Himalayan catchments

Orie Sasaki, Evan S. Miles, Francesca Pellicciotti, Akiko Sakai, and Koji Fujita

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-5283-2025-supplement

Data sets

GAMDAM glacier inventory for High Mountain Asia A. Sakai https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.891423

ERA5 hourly data on single levels from 1940 to present H. Hersbach et al. https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.adbb2d47

Model code and software

Scripts and data for Contrasting patterns of change in snowline altitude across five Himalayan catchments Orie Sasaki https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15718050

Short summary

This study adapts a method to detect snowline altitude (SLA) using Google Earth Engine with high-resolution satellite imagery. Applying this method to five glaciated watersheds in the Himalayas reveals regional consistencies and differences in snow dynamics, as well as 20-year trends of snowline increases (3 catchments) and decreases (1) and no trend (1). We investigate the controls of these dynamics by analyzing climatic factors and topographic characteristics.