| Session Details | |
| Section | AS - Atmospheric Sciences |
| Session Title | Changes in Cryosphere and Its Climate Impacts: Observation and Modeling |
| Main Convener | Prof. Chenghai Wang (Lanzhou University, China) |
| Co-convener(s) | Prof. Jing Zhang (North Carolina A, ) Prof. Zong-Liang Yang (The University of Texas at Austin, United States) Prof. Zhaoxia Pu (University of Utah, United States) |
| Session Description | The cryosphere, including sea ice, snow cover, permafrost, mountain glaciers, river/lake ice, ice sheets, and etc., plays an important role in earth’s climate system through its impacts on surface energy budget, terrestrial hydrological processes and ecological processes. Under the forcing of global warming, the components in cryosphere have experienced unprecedented evident changes in its overall elements. The Arctic sea-ice extent decreases at the fastest rate in recent decades. Snow cover extent has decreased in the Northern Hemisphere, especially in spring. The degradation of permafrost and increases of active layer thicknesses have been observed in many regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The active layers of the permafrost in the Tibetan Plateau have been thickening by 20 cm on average during the past decades. Mountain glaciers, such as Himalayan glaciers, which are extremely important for the livelihood of the people living in Asia, are facing their fate of fast melting. Accompanying with the melting, Glacier Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) present urgent threat to the mountain inhabitants living in the highly elevated Himalaya; and the water sustainability has been a great concern to the Asian people for decades. Sea level rise caused by the melting is of a great concern to the people living in the coastal zones. Regional ecological environments in the high altitude and high latitude regions have encountered serious challenges due to these changes. The presentations called in this session will focus on, but not limited to, revealing the changing fact of cryosphere, exploring the mechanism of cryospheric changes and the climatic impacts, modeling cryosphere components as well as predicting possible changes of cryosphere in future and severe climatic hazards in regions and globe, and providing recommendations of adaptation and mitigation policies to the current and future changes. |