High Mountain Asia hosts the largest glacier concentration outside the polar regions. These glaciers are important contributors to streamflow in one of the most populated areas of the world. Past studies have used methods that can provide only regionally averaged glacier mass balances to assess the glacier contribution to rivers and sea level rise. Here we compute the mass balance for about 92% of the glacierized area of High Mountain Asia using time series of digital elevation models derived from satellite stereo-imagery. We calculate a total mass change of −16.3 ± 3.5 Gt yr⁻¹ (−0.18 ± 0.04 m w.e. yr⁻¹) between 2000 and 2016, which is less negative than most previous estimates. Region-wide mass balances vary from −4.0 ± 1.5 Gt yr⁻¹ (−0.62 ± 0.23 m w.e. yr⁻¹) in Nyainqentanglha to +1.4 ± 0.8 Gt yr⁻¹ (+0.14 ± 0.08 m w.e. yr⁻¹) in Kunlun, with large intra-regional variability of individual glacier mass balances (standard deviation within a region ∼0.20 m w.e. yr⁻¹). Specifically, our results shed light on the Nyainqentanglha and Pamir glacier mass changes, for which contradictory estimates exist in the literature. They provide crucial information for the calibration of the models used for projecting glacier response to climatic change, as these models do not capture the pattern, magnitude and intra-regional variability of glacier changes at present.

Publisher Correction (18 June 2018)

高山亚洲拥有极地地区以外最大的冰川集中地。这些冰川是世界上人口最多的地区之一的河流流量的重要贡献者。过去的研究使用只能提供区域平均冰川质量平衡的方法来评估冰川对河流和海平面上升的贡献。在这里，我们使用源自卫星立体图像的数字高程模型的时间序列来计算亚洲高山约 92% 的冰川区域的质量平衡。我们计算出 2000 年至 2016 年间的总质量变化为 -16.3 ± 3.5 Gt yr ^-1 (-0.18 ± 0.04 m we yr ^-1 )，这比之前的大多数估计值要小。区域范围内的质量平衡变化范围为 -4.0 ± 1.5 Gt yr ^-1 (-0.62 ± 0.23 m we yr^-1 ) 在念青唐古拉到 +1.4 ± 0.8 Gt yr ^-1  (+0.14 ± 0.08 m we yr ^-1 )，个别冰川质量平衡的区域内变化很大（区域内的标准偏差为∼ 0.20 m we yr ^-1 )。具体来说，我们的研究结果揭示了念青唐古拉和帕米尔冰川的质量变化，文献中对此存在相互矛盾的估计。它们为用于预测冰川对气候变化的响应的模型的校准提供了关键信息，因为这些模型目前没有捕捉到冰川变化的模式、幅度和区域内变化。

发布者更正（2018 年 6 月 18 日）