The Hunza Valley, a tributary of the Indus River, is a highly glacierized river basin providing an ample amount of water to the Indus River and its tributaries. The river ultimately contributes large agriculture area in the downstream part for agrarian based economy of Pakistan. Global warming caused significant changes of glaciers with an average clear glacier mass loss worldwide. However, recent studies revealed the balanced mass budgets or even mass gain on investigated glaciers in Karakoram, eastern Pamir and western Kunlun Mountains and the occurrence of many surging glaciers. The Phenomenon is termed as the "Karakoram anomaly". The mechanism of the anomaly of glaciers and their future trend as well as potential impact on water availability in the region are key to the downstream economic development both in China and Pakistan. The purpose of the project, taking the case study of the Hunza Valley in close collaboration with the ICIMOD and its member country scientists, is to -analyze the spatiotemporal characteristics of glacier area change during the past decades by comparison of an up to date glacier inventory and the existing previous glacier inventories, and mass changes by digital elevation model (DEM) differencing from the early map DEMs or that from declassified satellite images as well as that generated from the most recent satellite data. Snow cover dynamics is also analyzed by integration of AVHHR, MODIS, Fengyun, SMM/R, SSM/I, AMSR-E snow products with careful refinement of the cloud cover influence. The response mechanism of snow and glacier to climate change is discussed with a mass-balance-dynamic model. -model meltwater runoff processes with a conceptual hydrological model coupling with a glacier module for benchmark glacier watersheds with in-situ hydro-meteorological observations and detailed glaciological observations. -project the water availability of the Hunza Valley under changes of snow and glaciers with the hydrological model forced by CMIP5 climate ensemble scenarios. The outcome of this project will be a systematic assessment of the spatial and temporal variability of glacier area and mass changes in Hunza Valley, its influence on hydrologic regimes and natural disasters, and its control by local and regional climatic forcing. This will be realized with the aid of ground data collection, satellite image archives, and available hydro-meteorological network run by the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD), Water, Pakistan
Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA), Karakoram International University as well as glacio-hydrologic modeling through bilateral cooperation of China and ICMOD scientists (member country scientists).