Long-term records of glacier evolution and associated proglacial lakes on the Tibetan Plateau (1976‒2020)

To better understand the evolution of glaciers and the impact of this on proglacial lakes, seven glaciers corresponding to continental, subcontinental, and marine climate types that are influenced by westerlies and the Indian summer monsoon were selected for study. The evolution of the edges of these glaciers and their associated proglacial lakes were identified based on the visual interpretation of Landsat TM/ETM+/OLI images.

A dataset covering the period 1976‒2020 that included the glacier and proglacial lake edge vectors was then created. The relative errors in the areas of the individual glaciers were less than 3%, and for the proglacial lakes these errors were in the range 0%‒7%. The dataset was used to effectively compare the changes in glaciers and proglacial lakes that have occurred over the past four decades.