Executive Summary : | Glacier dynamics across the Hindukush-Karakoram-Himalaya (HKH) region are likely to impact regional water balance and result in hazards associated with enhanced snow and glacier melt. Following the IPCC (2007) report on Himalayan glaciers, the frequency of studies to assess glacier dynamics over the post-1960/70s dramatically increased, albeit with limited details available for earlier periods particularly after the Medieval Climate Anamoly (MCA) and specifically since the Little Ice age maxima (LIAmax). Long-term records of glacier fluctuations are important to comprehend the intricacies of glacier-climate interactions during LIAmax, linkages to post-LIAmax climate warming, and predict future conditions. Several studies demonstrate that glaciers indeed advanced albeit with varying timing, magnitude, and extent during the LIAmax. Despite significant improvements in the quality and reproducibility of data on Holocene glacier fluctuations in recent decades, the data pertaining to LIAmax glacial advance, its magnitude and driving factors, and specifically how it responds to a changing climate post-LIAmax are still speculative across the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) as compared to the other parts of the world. This is partly due to less secured morainic stratigraphic, meager chronology data, and lack of synthesis of the multi-proxy data/tools. Moreover, the limited glacial chronologies, climatic proxies, and a handful of recent remote sensing studies indicate the higher spatial variability of glacier advances, its occurrence, synchronicity, and climatological characteristics during LIAmax and varying magnitude of the area and mass loss post-LIAmax in the IHR. Although such spatial variabilities are mainly controlled by the winnowing and waxing of the mid-latitude westerlies and Indian summer monsoon (ISM) across IHR and further modulated by glacier’s geometry, surface characteristics, hypsometric properties, and catchment topography and their interaction with mesoscale climate/meteorology and partial studied. Thus, to ascertain the response of glaciers dynamics post-Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) specifically at the onset of LIAmax across the varying precipitation gradient in the IHR, the proposed study will use Multi Proxy Data Integrative Approach (MPDIA) includes the mapping of glacial geomorphological signatures such as moraine stratigraphy and associated absolute chronology, the historical archives (repeat photographs, old topographical maps, published reports), climate proxies (mainly tree rings and lake/lacustrine sediment and reanalysis/gridded data), high-resolution remote sensing data (for palaeo-ice surface reconstruction to assess volumetric changes) and extensive field observations to provide exhaustive understanding about the magnitude of glacier fluctuations over the past millennia to the centennial-scale concerning the contemporary fluctuations. |