Abstract ID: 3.12691 | Accepted as Talk | Talk/Oral | TBA | TBA

In the Pamir Mountains exist some of the largest glaciers in the whole High Mountain Asia, covering extensive areas at high elevations. Recent glacier mass balance conditions in this region are considerably less negative than in most other parts of the world, which is widely known as the “Pamir-Karakoram anomaly”. However, it is particularly challenging to estimate long-term climate trends in the Pamir area, because of both the scarcity of observational data and the lack of performances of atmospheric models over glacierized areas of complex topography. To address these challenges, the regional climate model MAR has been used to generate a high-resolution atmospheric reanalysis covering the last decades for the Pamir mountains. The model is driven at its upper and lateral boundaries by ERA5 reanalyses, and is calibrated and validated using both local observations and remote sensing. Specifically, a recent field campaign has gathered new meteorological and glaciological data from various high-altitude sites on the Fedchenko Glacier. These efforts aim to enhance our understanding of glacier mass balance dynamics in the Pamir mountains, contributing valuable insights given the region’s unique climatic conditions and terrain challenges.