Tibet

From Chengdu (previous) post we flew to Tibet for our actual field work. This involved a long journey that started with a flight to Lhasa. We had an extra day in Lhasa and used it to visit the Potola (palace of the Dalai Lama) and some of the cultural sites. Lhasa has grown immensely and is a modern city that seems to be expanding really rapidly. Everywhere in Tibet there is an unbelievable amount of infrastructure building at rates that we are not used to in the West.

From Lhasa we drove for two days to the east, first to Nyingchi and then Bomi, both towns with lots of construction, highway building, etc. We then stayed in Bomi from where we accessed the 24K Glacier, named after its distance from Bomi. The road leads right up to the glacier, so access is quite easy. The glacier front is at about 3800 m asl, but that wasn't so problematic since we had spent most of the last few days at slightly below 4000 m, and actually interrupted our drive to walk around a bit at mountain passes as high as 4500 m.

Working in Tibet is definitely different from other field work I've done. We worked through collaborators at the Institute for Tibetan Plateau Research. These collaborators were hugely important, because they paved the way for us in terms of permits (you need a permit for everything), cars (with drivers), and some equipment.

The country we got to see is absolutely spectacular with some very impressive topography. Because we were at the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, we still have monsoon influence and a fair amount of moisture and clouds. So you don't get too many blue sky days, but it is still unbelievable how big and how rugged this country is.

Once on the glacier we did a variety of work involving UAVs, timelapse cameras, thermal cameras, ice penetrating radar (that was my contribution), mass balance, and terrestrial laser scanning. The goal is to get a detailed understanding of how this glacier, whose lower part is almost entirely covered in debris, is reacting to climate change, and how that differs from cleaner glaciers in similar climate.

Here are a few pictures:

The Potola Palace by night. Pictures cannot really capture how huge this palace is. We went on a tour of it, but weren't allowed to take any pictures inside the many, many temples. The extent of the temples and the amount of Buddha statues and decorations, often made of solid gold, are absolutely stunning.

The Chinese Communist Party is omnipresent in Tibet

... and nothing goes unsupervised. There are security cameras everywhere, especially in Lhasa

Drive to Nyingchi

Spectacular fall colors

There is an amazing amount of brand new infrastructure including high-tension power lines in some really difficult terrain

The Chinese are really trying to push for tourism, although it seems to be mostly aimed at Chinese tourists, although many signs are in English as well.

The amount of topography in Tibet is mind-blowing. This is the area of the Earth's deepest gorge in the headwaters of the Brahmaputra River.

This young mountain range together with the really steep topography makes for lots of erosion and valleys with big lobes of debris flows are seen everywhere and form a major challenge for all infrastructure

We commuted daily from Bomi, which is also growing very rapidly. I think until a few years ago it was essentially impossible for Westeners to even go here. Now there are parts that look more like Las Vegas than what one might have in mind for Tibet.

The road ends conveniently close to the glacier

Right by the parking lot is a monastary

We visited the monk who was very friendly. The photos shows some of the Chinese scientists and Tibetan field helpers.

The view from the monastery to the glacier. The lower glacier is all debris covered except for a prominent ice face at the front of the glacier. Prayer flags are everywhere, even quite high up on the mountain side.

A close-up of the ice face. This nicely shows that the debris cover is really quite thin and underneath it's almost entirely clean ice.

A weather station

A view of the neighboring glacier: 23K Glacier. Where did that name come from?

The glacier has a number of ice cliffs. These are interesting because they are places of enhanced melt, while the debris largely protects the ice from melt.

There are some incredibly steep hanging glaciers on these mountains.

The monastery from the glacier

We did some ice radar in the fresh snow; winter is starting.

This is an example of a radar profile. The blue line is the modeled bed elevation and red are our measurements.

Umbrellas are helpful in this wet weather.

Drilling some poles with steam. Because the rock is only on the surface, steam works quite well to drill holes into the underlying ice.

Our last day turned out to be very beautiful and on the way back to Bomi we saw this amazing mountain that we hadn't seen all week.

We had one spare day, a 'rest' day. So we got up extra early and did a high altitude hike.

A view of the glacier from high up. It nicely shows the lower debris covered part of the glacier

Hailuogou Glacier, China

I was invited to join a field expedition to Tibet, where the group of Francesca Pellicciotti at WSL, Switzerland, studies a debris-covered glacier. I came along to do some ice thickness measurements with my ice penetrating radar. The trip to Tibet is long and further delayed by bureaucracy. Our first stop in China was Chengdu. I had never even heard of this city, but it is huge with over 10 Million inhabitants. Among others, it hosts the world's largest building (by floor space). In Chengdu we had to get our permits to be allowed to Tibet. Because we arrived a bit early (due to cheaper ticket prices), we had the opportunity to visit the Hailuogou Glacier. This glacier descends from Mt. Gongga, the highest mountain of Szechuan province. It is of particular interest to somebody from UAF, because it was first climbed by an expedition led by Terry Moore, who later became president of UAF and remained interested in mountaineering and aviation for his entire life. Mt. Gongga (aka Mt. Minya Konka) was believed by some to be higher than Mt. Everest. The fascinating story of its first ascent, which was done in very modern fashion, is given in this account, and in the book 'Men Against Clouds'.

We never saw the mountain, that stands at an impressive 7556 m asl on our trip, but got a view of it from the air later when returning from Tibet:

Mt. Gongga is the pyramid that stands out highest. Note the snow drift coming of its ridge.

Hailuogou Glacier is becoming a prime tourist destination, despite its difficult access with a long winding road that ascends from the city of Mo Xi at about 1600 m to the base of the glacier at about 3000 m. This is some of the most impressive relief I've ever seen. Here are some pictures from the trip:

A Catholic church in Chinese style in the city of Mo Xi, the gateway town to visit the Hailuogou Glacier

A sign by the church explains how it was 'liberated' during the Cultural Revolution!

... and in front of it is now a giant statue of Mao

The visitor center is at about 3000 m asl. The steep terrain is full of loose material, leading to frequent debris flows.

The glacier terminus, rapidly retreating

A cable car leads to 3500 m with a look-out for Mt. Gongga. Since it is so frequently cloudy, there is a helpful large poster of the view on a sunny day, so people can still take pictures...

This was our view. Note the ice fall that is only just barely connected anymore (compare to the picture above, which is just a few years old)

We did walk around on the glacier a bit. Of course we had to ask for permission first, as with just about anything we did.

A hot summer in Alaska

This has been a hot summer in Alaska, and the glaciers show it. Last week I had the opportunity to fly into the Alaska Range and to Black Rapids Glacier. The upper areas were a bit cloudy, but the picture below shows an area that should really be snow covered at the end of the summer.

 

The different bands show areas where not only last winter's snow melted, but successively older snow packs (firn) as well. We have a mass balance model site there, which was traditionally in the accumulation area. No more.

Here are a few more pictures from the flight (all by A. Mahoney):

Kennicott Glacier and debris covered ice

We were back on the Kennicott Glacier in late August to disassemble the weather station we had put up earlier (see previous post). The goal was to collect detailed meteorological data over debris-covered ice, so that we can estimate the amount of melt that happens under the layer of rocks. Despite the appearance, the rock layer on this glacier is mostly quite thin (a few 10s of centimeters or less), but that's enough to insulate the glacier significantly and reduce ice melt.

(Photos are all by A. Aschwanden)

Pascal is digging out thermistors that were used to measure the temperature profile.

We are dismantling the weather station with the spectacular background of the Stairway Icefall

Weather stations make for awkward loads and require a special kind of pack animal ...

The abandoned copper mining town of Kennecott with the huge processing mill building. A giant rock glacier provides a spectacular background.

Kennicott Glacier

I spent a fair amount of time in McCarthy in the past few years, but never did any work on the glacier that is right outside the town: the Kennicott Glacier. The lower part of the glacier is almost entirely covered in debris of various thickness. This debris does protect the glacier ice from melting, but how exactly melt works on dirty glaciers is still an open question. My post-doc Pascal Buri proposed to put a comprehensive weather station on the middle of the glacier, so Andy Aschwanden, Pascal, and I headed down to carry gear and install the equipment.

Navigating across the rough glacier surface

The abandoned copper mining town of Kennecott

Here it is: the weather station

A beautiful rock glacier above the town of Kennecott

North side of the Alaska Range on the way home

A debris slump