A group of scientists gathered at Paris, France during 7-9 November, 2024 for a multidisciplinary workshop on Trans-Himalayas Earth System Science. Among those, long-term devoted glaciologists presented their latest studies of the cryosphere status in the trans-Himalayas, and exchanged their latest understandings on glacier preservations. Present at the workshop include Lonnie Thompson, Tandong Yao, Tobias Bolch, Shichang Kang, Ninglian Wang, Fanny Brun, Franco Salerno, Hans Christian Steen-Larsen and more.
Prof. Lonnie Thompson shared his group's latest effort in identifying the importance and challenges of the ice core records from mountaintop glaciers, addressing the importance of ice core dating in ice core paleoclimate reconstruction and highlighting the significance of international collaboration in jointly confronting the global warming challenge. Prof. Ninglian Wang introduced China's ongoing effort to update glacier inventory for the trans-Himalayas, highlighting the importance to distinguish between normal and surging glaciers, as well as debris-covered and non-debris covered glaciers for the region. Dr. Tobias Bolch shared his research in applying the latest technology and approaches to understanding glacier mass changes and their attributions, calling on further improvement in the knowledge of the past and future glacier and rock glacier changes, and highlighting the necessity to combine remote sensing with deep learning in enhancing human understanding of the glacial variations.
As scientists from diverse research fields attended the workshop, which covered four distinct aspects, namely, atmosphere and teleconnection, biosphere and carbon, crysophere and water and paleoclimate and future, such multidisciplinary exchanges would definitely contribute to further understandings of the glacier status in the trans-Himalayas from an earth science perspective.
