A Sediment Record from a Modern Glacial Lake in the Central Himalayas: Implications for Proxy Interpretation in Glacial Lake Studies

Abstract

The Himalayan-Tibetan Orogen holds numerous glaciers crucial for the Asian Water Tower, thus influencing the surface energy balance and climate feedback. Understanding glacier fluctuations is essential for improving our knowledge of current and future glacial evolution, but limited by short modern glacial observations. Proglacial lakes provide valuable opportunities to obtain high-resolution and continuous glacial changes, but detailed investigations remain scarce. For example, there is still controversy over whether lake sediments reflect melting or ablation. Therefore, we selected a modern glacial lake in the Himalayan region, formed due to glacial retreat in the 1960s, and compared its sedimentary records with modern observations. This provides a case study for future reconstruction of glacial changes using lake sediments. Our results indicate that the sediments of the proglacial lake are primarily influenced by glacial meltwater. Stronger meltwater fluxes transport more debris, magnetic minerals, and terrestrially derived organic matter to the lake. In terms of grain size distribution, the fine silt component (2–8 μm) can serve as an indicator of glacial meltwater intensity. Additionally, this study reveals an opposite trend between glacial meltwater variations and air temperature trends over the past few decades. This suggests that evaporation may offset the increase in glacial meltwater, though the multi-century (>100-year) trend requires validation with longer records.

Keywords

glaciers / meltwater / lake sediment / multi-proxy / central Himalayas / Nepal / climate change

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