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Abstract

The Hindu –Kush Himalayas (HKH) comprise more snow than anywhere else in the world outside the polar regions and is also referred to as the third pole. Snow is the fundamental source of discharge for 10 major Asian rivers, and glacier and snow melt support more than 1.3 billion people. This region is climatically sensitive with increasing temperature trends and decreasing precipitation trends. Studies agree to a general decline in Snow Cover Area (SCA) across the HKH with varying results depending on regional scale, study period and data used. In this study, we evaluate the Snow cover dynamics across the HKH across the 10 major basins of HKH using an improved MODIS daily snow dataset for 2002-2019. We used Mann–Kendall method to assess trends in the SCA and SLA. The northwestern basins have a high daily SCA, with Indus having the highest (109124 km²), while the southeastern basins have low, with Irrawaddy having the least (2726 km²). Brahmaputra has the highest daily SLE (5950 m), while Amu Darya has the lowest (3934 m). Annually Irrawaddy, Brahmaputra, Amu Darya and Tarim have significant decreasing trends in SCA while all basins except Yellow River have significant increasing trends in SLE. The highest SCA is observed during winter and lowest during summer while SLE demonstrates an inverse pattern.