Snow depth in the Hindu-Kush Karakoram Himalaya: current status and future projections

The Hindu-Kush Karakoram Himalaya (HKKH) mountains and the Tibetan plateau are the world's largest snow and ice reservoir outside the polar regions, and provide water to about 1.5 billion people in India, Nepal, Pakistan and China. Changes in snow dynamics in these areas would impact on water availability for downstream populations. The current knowledge on the snow character- istics in the HKKH is incomplete owing to the remoteness of the region, which allow only sparse and sporadic surface observations. Global Climate Models (GCMs), despite their coarse spatial resolution, may be eective in pro- viding a smooth but coherent picture of the large scale temporal and spatial patterns of snow depth. We consider the last generation of the Global Cli- mate Models (CMIP5) and we investigate how they represent the snowpack in the HKKH region compared to the major reanalysis products. We also explore the projected changes in snow depth for the XXI century in RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 sce- narios.