The Northeast Asia mountain glaciers in the near future by AOGCM scenarios

We studied contrasting glacier systems in con- tinental (Orulgan, Suntar-Khayata and Chersky) mountain ranges, located in the region of the lowest temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere at the boundary of Atlantic and Pa- cific influences - and maritime ones (Kamchatka Peninsula) - under Pacific influence. Our purpose is to present a sim- ple projection method to assess the main parameters of these glacier regions under climate change. To achieve this, con- structed vertical profiles of mass balance (accumulation and ablation) based both on meteorological data for the 1950- 1990s (baseline period) and ECHAM4 for 2049-2060 (pro- jected period) are used, the latter - as a climatic scenario. The observations and scenarios were used to define the re- cent and future equilibrium line altitude and glacier terminus altitude level for each glacier system as well as areas and balance components. The altitudinal distributions of ice ar- eas were determined for present and future, and they were used for prediction of glacier extent versus altitude in the sys- tem taking into account the correlation between the ELA and glacier-terminus level change. We tested two hypotheses of ice distribution versus altitude in mountain (valley) glaciers - "linear" and "non-linear". The results are estimates of the possible changes of the areas and morphological structure of northeastern Asia glacier systems and their mass balance characteristics for 2049-2060. Glaciers in the southern parts of northeastern Siberia and those covering small ranges in Kamchatka will likely disappear under the ECHAM4 sce- nario; the best preservation of glaciers will be on the highest volcanic peaks of Kamchatka. Finally, we compare charac- teristics of the stability of continental and maritime glacier systems under global warming.