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Asia’s glaciers are a regionally important buffer against drought

Overview of attention for article published in Nature, May 2017
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (99th percentile)
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (78th percentile)

Mentioned by

news
9 news outlets
blogs
4 blogs
policy
1 policy source
twitter
305 X users
facebook
5 Facebook pages
wikipedia
1 Wikipedia page
googleplus
3 Google+ users

Citations

dimensions_citation
154 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
279 Mendeley
citeulike
1 CiteULike
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Title
Asia’s glaciers are a regionally important buffer against drought
Published in
Nature, May 2017
DOI 10.1038/nature22062
Pubmed ID
Authors

Hamish D. Pritchard

Abstract

The high mountains of Asia-encompassing the Himalayas, the Hindu Kush, Karakoram, Pamir Alai, Kunlun Shan, and Tian Shan mountains-have the highest concentration of glaciers globally, and 800 million people depend in part on meltwater from them. Water stress makes this region vulnerable economically and socially to drought, but glaciers are a uniquely drought-resilient source of water. Here I show that these glaciers provide summer meltwater to rivers and aquifers that is sufficient for the basic needs of 136 million people, or most of the annual municipal and industrial needs of Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. During drought summers, meltwater dominates water inputs to the upper Indus and Aral river basins. Uncertainties in mountain precipitation are poorly known, but, given the magnitude of this water supply, predicted glacier loss would add considerably to drought-related water stress. Such additional water stress increases the risk of social instability, conflict and sudden, uncontrolled population migrations triggered by water scarcity, which is already associated with the large and rapidly growing populations and hydro-economies of these basins.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 305 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 279 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United Kingdom 2 <1%
Austria 1 <1%
Netherlands 1 <1%
Japan 1 <1%
United States 1 <1%
Unknown 273 98%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 67 24%
Researcher 54 19%
Student > Master 24 9%
Student > Bachelor 19 7%
Professor 15 5%
Other 41 15%
Unknown 59 21%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Earth and Planetary Sciences 106 38%
Environmental Science 47 17%
Engineering 17 6%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 7 3%
Social Sciences 5 2%
Other 18 6%
Unknown 79 28%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 279. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 23 December 2022.
All research outputs
#127,495
of 25,368,786 outputs
Outputs from Nature
#8,399
of 97,770 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#2,768
of 325,408 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Nature
#177
of 835 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,368,786 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 97,770 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 102.4. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 91% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 325,408 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 835 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 78% of its contemporaries.