Glacier surge in West Kunlun Shan, NW tibet detected by Synthetic Aperture Radar

We detected glacier surge in West Kunlun Shan (WKS) located to the northern-western Tibetan plateau. We used several SAR archive data from 1990s and detected surface velocity field based on offset tracking with parallel flow assumption. We also used Landsat optical image from 1970s to detect terminus position of glaciers. Our results revealed velocity variation and terminus change caused by glacier surge. We examined 36 glaciers in WKS and identified 5 glaciers as surge-type glacier. These 5 glaciers gradually accelerated and decelerated during our observation period, accompanied with advance of terminus. The lower part of some glaciers became stagnant after surging. This stagnant profile appeared other glaciers that we did not identified as surge-type. We could not detect velocity variation these glaciers but clearly terminus were advanced/retreated from 1976 to 2011.