Since the industrial era, rising global temperatures have triggered rapid glacial changes. How sustained warming impacts glacier water resources within a projected timescale remains a critical contemporary issue. This dataset employs a glacier water balance model to numerically simulate glacier water resource evolution in High Mountain Asia over this century. We quantify glacier changes, dead ice development, and glacial lake expansion under different temperature rise scenarios. This study provides essential support for water resource planning and management, and ecological adaptation measures in relevant regions.
This dataset represents the model outputs from the research paper “Positive glacial regulatory processes promote sustainability of Asian glacier water resources” (Wang et al., 2026). The dataset comprises the following three components:
1. Support materials for the research paper by Wang et al. (2026). The compressed file “Attachment.zip” contains the paper's primary findings, including statistical results on glacier mass/area/velocity changes, decadal inventories of dead ice/glacial lakes, and quantitative results for different GRPs. For further details regarding this dataset, please refer to the Readme.txt file within the compressed archive.
2. Glacier evolution model outputs from Wang et al. (2026). The glacier evolution model developed in the research paper generates annual-scale spatial data and statistical outputs on glacier changes. This includes spatial variations of variables including glacier thickness, surface velocity, and basal velocity, as well as statistical results for variables encompassing glacier area and glacier mass. Data format is NetCDF. For variable details, refer to filename descriptions after reading the files or consult https://www.pism.io/docs/manual/diagnostics/index.html.
3. Annual-scale glacial lake inventory in HMA. Building upon the research paper by Wang et al. (2026), we have extended the glacial lake inventory to an annual scale for supporting higher-resolution statistical analysis and modeling in related studies.
This dataset employs an independently developed glacier water balance model to quantify glacier changes, dead ice development, and glacial lake expansion under different temperature rise scenarios. Its core components include: glacier surface mass balance gradient model, three-dimensional glacier dynamics model, and glacier convergence model, comprehensively accounting for the evolution of different glacier water resources components. For detailed methodological insights, refer to the research paper “Positive glacial regulatory processes promote sustainability of Asian glacier water resources” (Wang et al., 2026).
To validate data accuracy and quantify its uncertainty, this dataset was compared with multiple observational sources including remote sensing observations of glacier changes, measured surface mass balance data, glacier flow velocity datasets, and remote sensing imagery of glacial lakes. The comparison demonstrates reliable data quality. For detailed data quality assessment, refer to the related research paper “Positive glacial regulatory processes promote sustainability of Asian glacier water resources” (Wang et al., 2026).
| # | number | name | type |
| 1 | 42171137 | Simulation of glacial lake formation and development under future warming scenarios and its disaster effects | National Natural Science Foundation of China |
| 2 | U23A2011 | Simulation and Early Warning of Dynamic/Thermal Coupling Processes in the Himalayan Glacial Avalanche-Glacial Lake Outburst Disaster Chain | National Natural Science Foundation of China |
| 3 | 2023NCDC009 | Development of a 21st Century Glacial and Glacial Lake Evolution Dataset for Asian High-Altitude Regions | NCDC Open Fund Project |
This work is licensed under a
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Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
CSTR:11738.11.NCDC.NIEER.DB7057.2026
10.12072/ncdc.nieer.db7057.2026
