Long‐term spatiotemporal variability in the surface velocity of Eastern Himalayan glaciers, India

Investigation of spatiotemporal variation in glacier velocity is imperative to comprehend mass and volume loss as a function their sensitivity climate change. The long-term record for the Eastern Himalayan region utmost importance owing its data scarcity sensitivity. Here, we present dataset spanning more than two decades (1994–2020) surface entire Sikkim Himalaya by applying image correlation methods on multi-temporal Landsat images. Our results demonstrate an average decline from 15.7 ± 5.69 (1994/96) 12.88 2.09 m yr−1 (2018/2020), that ~15% during period investigation. Trend analysis shows decreasing trend median (32.2%) at rate 0.25 yr−1. Despite general velocity, slowdown individual glaciers extremely heterogeneous (3.6–20 yr−1). study up 32% observed heterogeneity can be explained size. highlights large with thick ice cover move faster compared small (even those situated steep slopes). findings are significant have direct implications assessing future water availability scenarios modelling glacio-hydrology region.