Abstract
It is unclear glacier melt response (e.g., the magnitude and timing of changes in glacier melt) and the extent of contribution of glacier melts towards river flow in the context of climate change for major river basins originating in High Mountain Asia. Here we evaluate glacier melt response to climate change at major river basin scale for 11 basins using glacier melts estimated by a glacier model. Furthermore, we attempt to add the runoff outputs of climate models with the glacier melts into a "total runoff" to reveal the hydrological impact of the glacier melts. Our simulation implied that the glacier melt response of climate change is regionally different. However, the annual total runoff would increase caused by primarily an increase in non-glacier melt components across 11 basins until the end of 21st century. The relative contribution of glacier melts to the total runoff would significantly decrease towards the end of 21st century in some basins and it might have implications on seasonal water supplies.
