Some glaciers in central Asia could be weathering climate change better than those in neighbouring mountain ranges because of different seasonal weather patterns.

Credit: Colin Monteath/Hedgehog House/Minden Pictures/Corbis

Geoscientists have puzzled over why the glaciers of the Karakoram region (pictured) have not receded as much as others nearby. A team led by Sarah Kapnick of Princeton University, New Jersey, compared about 30 years of temperature and precipitation data up to 2007 with climate simulations covering 1861 to 2100. The team found that Karakoram gets most of its precipitation during winter. By contrast, nearby ranges such as the central Himalayas experience mainly summertime rains driven by monsoons.

This seasonal difference could be preventing the Karakoram glaciers from shrinking, and could even be causing some of the glacier expansion seen there in the past several years.

Nature Geosci. http://doi.org/v9g (2014)