Climates of the Himalayas: Present, Past and Future

Dear Colleagues,

Extending from the eastern Tibetan Himalaya to the Hindukush and Karakoram ranges in the northwest, the 2400-kilometer long Himalayan arc ensures the food-water-energy security, sustainable development and socio-economic wellbeing of billions of downstream inhabitants. Earth’s highest mountain range modulates distinct largescale atmospheric modes, affects all scopes of boundary layer dynamics and subsequently features an enormous topoclimatic heterogeneity, rarely covered by sparse observational record. Despite recent extensions in the observational networks, increased availability of remotely sensed datasets, swelling paleoclimatic reconstructions, and advances in convection-permitting climate modelling, detailed understanding of physical topoclimatic processes and their feedbacks, shifts in the prevailing precipitation regimes and their controls, and subsequent impacts on mountainous ecosystems remains elusive across times and scales. This pose a wide range of scientific challenges in understanding the Himalayan climate system of the past, present and future, their shifts and their severe impacts on all dependent sectors of life.

Against this background, this special issue invites observation, proxy reconstruction, and projections based analytical and modelling studies and their reviews that advance our knowledge about the past, present and future of the Himalayan climates, their shifts, and their subsequent impacts on all dimensions of life at local and regional scales. To broaden the regional focus and to enable comparative studies, articles on the Himalayas and its bordering high mountain ranges including the Karakoram, Hindu Kush and the Tibetan Plateau are welcome.

Prof. Dr. Jürgen Böhner
Dr. Shabeh ul Hasson
Guest Editors

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