| Glacier Monitoring
Hindukush-Karakorum-Himalayas (HKH) ranges join together in Northern Pakistan to host world largest repository of snow and glaciated ice outside Polar Regions. This fragile mounaneous enviroenment is adversely vulnerable toward specter of global aWarming and Climate Change. In IPCC’s report it was claimed that Glacier in HKH are melting rapidly, therefore, PMD being sole national weather forecasting agengy decided to step in permanent glacier monitoring, so that, pace of climate change, that is creeping in Northern Pakistan, can be estimated. HKH in Pakistan hosts nearly 5300 glaciers and serves as snow accumulation blow for River Indus and its several adjoining tributaries. PMD has established nearly 15 permanent conventional observatories in the area to monitor weather and climatology. Recently, with the advancement in monitoring equipment technology, PMD beefed up its meteorological monitoring network with induction of Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) that may serve continuously at high altitude with perpetual man assistance. In this regard, so far 5 AWS are installed at Baltoro, Passu and Batura glaciers, whereas, more installation at other meteorologically strategic important places is in pipeline. Apart from meteorological monitoring PMD is involved in situ measurement of glaciers’ characteristics, that includes melting rates, depth, debris cover, velocities of different glaciers and their mass balance. Sofar nearly 11 international scientific expeditions have experimented on different glaciers. These expeditions includes joint ventures with International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD)-Nepal, EV-K2CNR-Italy, State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences (SKLCS) Lanzhou-China, University of Tokyo-Japan (Department of Civil Engineering) and ETH-Switzerland (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich).
|
