ANNOUNCEMENTS
Climate change is one of the major and critical challenges for scientific community including policy makers in the 21st century. Glaciers are widely known as one of the best indicators of climate change over recent centuries and these glaciers are melting across the globe, including Himalayas. The Himalayas widely known as the Third Pole are also losing their ice mass significantly however the processes are relatively less known. Hence understanding the consequences of climate change on glacier dynamics is of utmost importance. . In this paper, the glacier retreat pattern for last five decades in the Miyar and Bhaga basins were estimated using satellite images: CORONA (1971) and Sentinel 2B (2018). A total of 87 glaciers covering an area of 189 km2 (96.72±0.68 km2 area of 33 glaciers in Miyar basin and 91.82±0.17 km2 area of 54 glaciers in Bhaga basin) were considered for this study.). The estimated total glacier area loss in Miyar and Bhaga basin were 13.89 km2 and 22.05 km2respectively. The terminus retreat for Miyar and Bhaga basin were found to be 9.49 ± 5.42 m a-1 and 8.06± 6.13 m a-1 respectivelys. The annual and seasonal pattern of glacier velocities and its linkage with geomorphometric parameters, such as slope, aspect and elevation were alsoanalysed using GoLIVE datase., Observation shows that there is positive correlation between glacier surface flow and geomorphometric parameters. Similarly a positive relation between glacier velocity and glacier terminal were also observed. Further, a trend analysis of temperature and precipitation over the study area revealed a significant increase in temperature (1.35o C) and decreasing in precipitation during last five decade. It was also observed that the number of days with positive temperature during the accumulation days has increased significantly for both the basins which is in contrast from the similar studies carried out in the Swiss Alps.
