Why are glacial lakes in the eastern Tianshan Mountains expanding at an accelerated rate?

Monitoring alpine lakes is important for understanding the regional environmental changes caused by global warming. In this study, we provided a detailed analysis of lake in Tianshan Mountains (TS) and discussed their driving forces based on Landsat TM/ETM+/OLI, WorldView-2, Bing, Google Earth, ASTER imagery, along with climatic data from 1990 to 2015. The results showed that during study period, total number area eastern TS exhibited an increasing trend, 64.06% 47.92%, respectively. Furthermore, continuous expansion glacial contributed 95.12% 94.17% increase area, respectively, lakes. Non-glacial only intermittent expansion. Since 1990s, new have been mainly proglacial extraglacial Over past 25 years, has experienced temperature rate 0.47 °C/10a, which higher than other regions. rapidly warming climate glacier recession are primary causes accelerated TS.