Forum for Science, Industry and Business

Mid-latitude westerlies as a driver of glacier variability in monsoonal High Asia

Climatologists at TU Berlin discovered a previously unknown connection between glacier variability and temperate zones. In their new publication, Dr. Thomas Mölg, Fabien Maussion and Prof. Dr. Dieter Scherer show that westerlies in Europe play a part in influencing the Asian glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau. Their findings have just been published in “Nature Climate Change“.

Glaciers in High Asia store large amounts of water and are affected by climate change. Efforts to determine decadal-scale glacier change are there-fore increasing, predicated on the concept that glaciers outside the northwest of the mountain system are controlled by the tropical monsoon. Here we show that the mass balance of Zhadang Glacier on the southern Tibetan Plateau, 2001-2011, was driven by midlatitude climate as well, on the basis of high-altitude measurements and combined atmospheric-glacier modelling.

Results reveal that precipitation conditions in May-June largely determine the annual mass-balance, but they are shaped by both the intensity of Indian summer monsoon onset and mid-latitude dynamics. In particular, large-scale westerly waves control the tropospheric flow strength over the Tibetan Plateau remotely.

This strength alone explains 73% of interannual mass-balance variability of Zhadang Glacier, and affects May-June precipitation and summer air temperatures in many parts of High Asia’s zone of monsoon influence. Thus, mid-latitude climate should be considered as a possible driver of past and future glacier changes in this zone.

Dipl.-Ing. Fabien Maussion, TU Berlin, Institute of Ecology, Chair of Climatology, Rothenburgstr. 12, 12165 Berlin, Phone: +49 (0)30 314-71495, email: fabien.maussion@tu-berlin.de

Stefanie Terp | idw
Further information:
http://www.klima.tu-berlin.de
http://www.klima.tu-berlin.de/index.php?show=forschung_tibet&lan=de

Im Focus: (Re)solving the jet/cocoon riddle of a gravitational wave event

An international research team including astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, has combined radio telescopes from five continents to prove the existence of a narrow stream of material, a so-called jet, emerging from the only gravitational wave event involving two neutron stars observed so far. With its high sensitivity and excellent performance, the 100-m radio telescope in Effelsberg played an important role in the observations.

In August 2017, two neutron stars were observed colliding, producing gravitational waves that were detected by the American LIGO and European Virgo detectors....

Im Focus: Light from a roll – hybrid OLED creates innovative and functional luminous surfaces

Up to now, OLEDs have been used exclusively as a novel lighting technology for use in luminaires and lamps. However, flexible organic technology can offer much more: as an active lighting surface, it can be combined with a wide variety of materials, not just to modify but to revolutionize the functionality and design of countless existing products. To exemplify this, the Fraunhofer FEP together with the company EMDE development of light GmbH will be presenting hybrid flexible OLEDs integrated into textile designs within the EU-funded project PI-SCALE for the first time at LOPEC (March 19-21, 2019 in Munich, Germany) as examples of some of the many possible applications.

The Fraunhofer FEP, a provider of research and development services in the field of organic electronics, has long been involved in the development of...

Im Focus: Regensburg physicists watch electron transfer in a single molecule

For the first time, an international team of scientists based in Regensburg, Germany, has recorded the orbitals of single molecules in different charge states in a novel type of microscopy. The research findings are published under the title “Mapping orbital changes upon electron transfer with tunneling microscopy on insulators” in the prestigious journal “Nature”.

The building blocks of matter surrounding us are atoms and molecules. The properties of that matter, however, are often not set by these building blocks...

Im Focus: University of Konstanz gains new insights into the recent development of the human immune system

Scientists at the University of Konstanz identify fierce competition between the human immune system and bacterial pathogens

Cell biologists from the University of Konstanz shed light on a recent evolutionary process in the human immune system and publish their findings in the...

Im Focus: Transformation through Light

Laser physicists have taken snapshots of carbon molecules C₆₀ showing how they transform in intense infrared light

When carbon molecules C₆₀ are exposed to an intense infrared light, they change their ball-like structure to a more elongated version. This has now been...