Recession of Trakarding glacier and expansion of Tsho Rolpa lake in Nepal Himalaya based on satellite data

One of the most obvious consequences of climate change in the Himalayan mountain region is wide-spread glacier recession and growth of glacial lakes. This study explores the link between the recession of Trakarding glacier and the growth of its proglacial Tsho Rolpa lake based on multi-temporal satellite images including high-resolution Corona KHA, KH-9 Hexagon and moderate-resolution Landsat images. The study reveals that Trakarding glacier shrank from 30.7 +/- 0.2 km(2) to 28.8 +/- 0.7 km(2) with an average rate of 0.04 +/- 0.001 km(2) a(-1) between 1964 and 2018. The glacier length reduced by about similar to 2 km with an annual rate of 37.0 m a(-1) +/- 0.2 m. The Tsho Rolpa proglacial lake grew nearly three times from 0.48 +/- 0.01 km(2) in 1964 to 1.56 +/- 0.01 km(2) in 2018 and has become one of the largest glacial lakes of Nepal. We conclude that the connection of proglacial lakes with glaciers snout accelerates the glacier recession, which in turn leads to the growth of lake itself.