| Session Details | |
| Section | HS - Hydrological Sciences |
| Session Title | Global Cryosphere and Its Challenges |
| Main Convener | Dr. Jing Ming (China Meteorological Administration, China) |
| Co-convener(s) | Prof. Chenghai Wang (Lanzhou University, China) Prof. Ramesh Singh (Chapman University, United States) Dr. Yong Zhang (National Institute of Polar Research, Japan) |
| Session Description | The Earth’s cryosphere denotes the solid water contained in the land, atmosphere, ocean, and lithosphere, including ice sheets, snow cover, permafrost, mountain glaciers, river/lake ice, and etc. In the background of global warming, the cryosphere has experienced an unprecedented change in its overall elements. The sea-ice area in the Arctic is in its fastest recession since the 1980s. Sea level rise caused by the melting of global ice (Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and mountain glaciers) is a great concern to the people in the small islands and coastal zones. The active layers of the permafrost in the Tibetan Plateau have been thickening by 20 cm averagely during the past decades. Regional ecological environments in the Plateau are to encounter serious challenges. Mountain glaciers, especially Himalayan glaciers which are extremely important to the livelihood of the people living in Asia, are facing their fate of fast melting. Accompanying with the melting, Glacier Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) are fatal to the mountain inhabitants living in the highly elevated Himalaya in the urgent phase; and the problem of water sustainability is a great issue to the Asian people in the long-term period. Green House Gases (GHGs) emissions, anthropogenic aerosols, dust, and ashes by wild fires in the atmosphere and their deposition in snow and ice, and regional reducing precipitations can all induce the total recession of the cryosphere. Cryospheric changes will cause deep changes in climate and social society at global and regional scales. The presentations called in this session will be concerned with, but not limited to, revealing the changing facts and scenarios of the future of the cryosphere, exploring cryospheric changing mechanism, the relationship between cryosphere and climate change diagnosis and analysis using a crysphere-atmosphere coupled general circulation models as well as examining trends, predicting possible changes in cryosphere and severe climatic hazards in East Asia, and providing recommendations how to plot the current and future adaptation and mitigation policies. This session had a very successful experience in Brisbane in 2013, in which we have totally We hope it can maintain its success in Sapporo in 2014. Let us meet there. |