Acceleration of Glacier Mass Loss after 2013 at the Mt.Everest(Qomolangma)

Satellite geodesy is capable of observing glacier height changes and most recent studies focus on the decadal scale due to limitations of data acquisition and precision.Glaciers at the Mt.Everest(Qomolangma),locating at the central Himalaya,have been studied from the 1970s to 2015.Here we obtained TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X images observed in two epochs,a group around 2013 and another in 2017.Together with SRTM observed in 2000,we derived geodetic glacier mass balance between 2000 and 2013 and 2013 and 2017.We proposed two InSAR procedures for deriving the second period,which yields with basically identical results of geodetic glacier mass balance.The differencing between DEMs derived by TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X shows better precision than that between TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X formed DEM and SRTM,and it can capable of providing geodetic glacier mass balance at a sub-decadal scale.Glaciers at the Mt.Everest(Qomolangma)and its surroundings present obvious speeding up in mass loss rates before and after 2013 for both the Chinese and the Nepalese sides.The previous obtained spatial heterogeneous pattern for glacier downwasting between 2000 and 2013 generally kept the same after 2013.Glaciers with lacustrine terminus present the most rapid lost rates.