PhD Studentship: Climate Change, future water resources and the evolution of glaciers in High Mountain Asia

High Mountain Asia (HMA), known as Asia’s Water Tower, is undergoing rapid economic development with growing populations in quickly developing countries. However, future development is hampered by increasingly vulnerable water resources and climate change.  

HMA contains the largest volume of glacial ice outside of the Poles. The impact of climate change on this enormous region is profound because of the pronounced vulnerability of mountain glaciers to melting.  Increasing surface air temperature and changes in precipitation is reflected in widespread glacier recession and this will likely continue with an increase in associated natural hazards. Across HMA there has been vegetation expansion in alpine vegetation communities as glaciers melt; and our previous studies show a potentially wide range of hydrological outcomes which may feed back to the cryospheric system. So far ecological, hydrological, and cryospheric work has been conducted separately. To address this gap, our project integrates these overlapping areas to provide a holistic understanding of their interactions. 

For these reasons our project will assess how a combination of climate change, ice melting and vegetation change will impact contrasting regions of HMA.  One way of assessing these issues is to   understand the range of glacier-climate interactions in contrasting research sites.  Possible sites could include areas we have worked in previously: the Khumbu catchment in Nepal, the Kangri catchment in Ladakh, and the Heihe catchment in the Qilian Shan.  Using insights from these catchments, we will extend our analysis to cover all major water basins across HMA. We will simulate future changes in temperature, precipitation, and snowmelt using climate projection models. These projections, combined with hydrological modelling, will allow us to assess the future availability of water resources in sensitive watersheds. 

The successful candidate is likely to have a background in at least one of the following: physical geography; environmental science; hydrology; climate science; applied physics; applied mathematics.  They will use remote sensing techniques and physical modelling to assess climate and glacier evolution in these high research sites.  An interest in fieldwork at high altitude and in challenging environments will be a distinct advantage. 

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