Figure 1

The Tianshan Mountains"

Figure 2

Sketch map of the theoretical framework in this study (P: precipitation, T: temperature, E: evapotranspiration, R: runoff, and TWS: terrestrial water storage)"

Figure 3

Glacier variations in the Tianshan Mountains during 1961-2012 (datasets provided by Farinotti et al., 2015), (a) the glacial retreat rate at different elevation bands; (b) the glacial retreat rate in different areas fitted with the function f(x)=a×xb."

Table 1

Variations in glacier area in the typical river basins (or glaciers) of the Tianshan Mountains during the 1960s/70s-2010; the glacial serial number in this table is consistent with that in Figure 1"

Figure 4

Analysis of glaciers mass balances, a) mass balance change of the Tuyuksuyskiy Glacier during 1957-2012; b) mass balance in the Urumqi Glacier No.1 during 1980-2012"

Figure 5

Variations in the maximum and minimum snow cover rates in Tianshan Mountains during 2002-2013"

Table 2

Days of snow cover in the Tianshan Mountains during 2002-2013. Max is the date of maximum snow cover in the year, Min is the date of minimum snow cover in the year, and days is the days between the maximum and minimum snow cover"

Figure 6

Variations in TWS in the Tianshan Mountains during 2003-2015 (a is the spatial variation of TWS, b is the time series of TWS, the blue line is the TWS-Mascons value, and the red line represents the uncertainty.)"

Figure 7

The TWS variations in the Tianshan Mountains at seasonal and monthly scales during 2003-2015 (a1 and a2 show the seasonal scale, and b shows the monthly scale.)"

Figure 8

Variations in annual mean temperature, glaciers, and TWS in the Tianshan Mountains (a is the variation in annual mean temperature during 1961-2010, b is the glacier mass balance change rate during 1961-2012, and c is the variations in TWS during 2003-2015.)"

Table 3

Characteristics of runoff in the three typical river basins"

Figure 9

Runoff changes in the Aksu (a1, a2), Kaidu (b1, b2), and Urumqi (c1, c2) river basins during 1960-2010. a1, b1, and c1 refer to the annual runoff changes; a2, b2, and c2 refer to the seasonal runoff changes and the ratio of seasonal to annual runoff"

Figure 10

Relationship between glacier characteristic variations and runoff changes in the Urumqi River Basin. (a. glacial variation based on the first and second glacier inventories of China; b. comparison of changes in runoff and the ELV of the Urumqi Glacier No.1; c. comparison of the changes in runoff and mass balance of the Urumqi Glacier No.1)"