IMMERSE
Inverting Mountain Meteorology From
Cryospheric Remote Sensing And Ecohydrological
Modelling (DRAGON 6).
About the project
The High Mountain Asia (HMA) water towers are among the most important globally, yet are the most vulnerable to climatic, societal and environmental change. Understanding the current state and future changes of ice and snow reservoirs in these mountains is therefore a key priority, but runoff from glacierized catchments has generally been investigated as if disconnected from the rest of the hydrological and biogeochemical cycle.
The main objective of the European-Chinese project is to constrain glacio- and eco-hydrological processes to quantify the interplay of blue, green, and white water fluxes in glacierized catchments across HMA. Firstly, it will advance understanding of cryospheric, vegetation and land surface changes from remote sensing observations at benchmark sites. Secondly, we will conduct an inversion of climate biases from remote sensing observations using ecohydrological modelling. Finally, we will use the bias-corrected climatic forcing to quantify the water cycle of selected HMA water towers with the hyper-resolution land surface model to examine the dynamics and changes to blue, green and white water fluxes.
FUNDING: ESA-NRSCC-MOST
PERIOD: 2024-2028
What have we found?
The project is just beginning!
Neverthesless, it follows on from a string of successful collaborations through the DRAGON 4 and DRAGON 5 programmes!
