Estimating Dynamic Parameters of Bara Shigri Glacier and Derivation of Mass Balance from Velocity

Glaciers are the most important component in the cryosphere and are a reliable indicator of climate change. Thus, observation of glacier dynamics helps understand glacier health and monitor climate change. Glacier velocity, thickness and mass balance are the few important parameters to consider regarding glacier dynamics. The main aim of this study is to estimate these three dynamic parameters of a glacier and deriving mass balance form the velocity. DEM differencing method is the most familiar recent remote sensing technique to estimate mass balance. But for the first time, we are using velocity to derive the mass balance and radar interferometry technique used to estimate the velocity. The potential of Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (DInSAR), a SAR technique, to measure surface movement with millimeter level accuracy is utilized to observe the glacier movement. Laminar flow law used here to derive the thickness from velocity. In this study, we used 15 years' time difference data (1999 and 2015 datasets) to check the health of the largest glacier in Himachal Pradesh, Bara Shigri glacier through dynamic parameters. Bara Shigri glacier velocity and thickness both were decreased in the 2015 year compared with 1999. We used these two thickness maps (1999 and 2015) to estimate ice thickness change and we mainly observed more thinning in the ablation region but in accumulation region, ice thickness was increased from 1999 to 2015 year. Thickness change (2015–1999) used to calculate the mass balance of Bara Shigri glacier, observed this as negative and the yearly thinning rate is 1.18 m. This further used to estimate the specific mass balance using density and area of the glacier.