David Loibl

Partners: Prof. Dr. Christoph Schneider (HU), Prof. Dr. Bodo Bookhagen (UP), Prof. Dr. Dieter Scherer (TU), Dr. Jörn Lauterjung (GFZ), Dr. Lars Gerlitz (GFZ)

Project: 'MOdel- and Remote Sensing-based Analysis of glacier-related NAtural Hazards in the Tien Shan mountains' (MORSANAT)

Climate change impacts in Central Asia pose severe threats to local communities and water resource management. In this sensitive region, no integrated analysis and cryospheric process understanding exist that provide an inventory of glacier-related hazards and other climate change impacts. The project MORSANAT aims to develop, test and apply a modeling and analysis toolkit that uses change detection approaches based on novel Terra SAR-X and Sentinel satellite data for the inventory of glacier-related hazards (glacial surges, rapid growth of proglacial lakes, instable moraines) and snow-water equivalent assessments. We will make use of existing modeling schemes and further advance these to model glacier change despite the highly non-linear character and limited observational data. MORSANAT will comprise remote sensing data (UP), the COSIMA glacier model (HU), the HAR dataset (TU), further dynamical and statistical downscaling approaches (TU, GFZ), and observational data (GFZ).