Han, Xu;
Dai, Jin-Gen;
Smith, Adam GG;
Xu, Shi-Ying;
Liu, Bo-Rong;
Wang, Cheng-Shan;
Fox, Matthew;
(2024)
Recent uplift of Chomolungma enhanced by river drainage piracy.
Nature Geoscience
, 17
pp. 1031-1037.
10.1038/s41561-024-01535-w.
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Abstract
The Himalayas, which host glaciers, modulate the Indian Monsoon and create an arid Tibetan Plateau, play a vital role in distributing freshwater resources to the world’s most populous regions. The Himalayas formed under prolonged crustal thickening and erosion by glaciers and rivers. Chomolungma (8,849 m)—also known as Mount Everest or Sagarmāthā—is higher than surrounding peaks, and GPS measurements suggest a higher uplift rate in recent years than the long-term trend. Here we analyse the potential contribution of a river capture event in the Kosi River drainage basin on the renewed surface uplift of Chomolungma. We numerically reconstruct the capture process using a simple stream power model combined with nonlinear inverse methods constrained by modern river profiles. Our best-fit model suggests the capture event occurred approximately 89 thousand years ago and caused acceleration of downstream incision rates. Flexural models estimate this non-steady erosion triggers isostatic response and surface uplift over a broad geographical area. We suggest that part of Chomolungma’s anomalous elevation (~15–50 m) can be explained as the isostatic response to capture-triggered river incision, highlighting the complex interplay between geological dynamics and the formation of topographic features.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Recent uplift of Chomolungma enhanced by river drainage piracy |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41561-024-01535-w |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01535-w |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. - Please note that a correction was issued on 16 January 2025 which changed the licence to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license ['This article was originally published under standard Springer Nature license (© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited). It is now available as an open-access paper under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license']. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Earth Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10198003 |
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