Hunza Valley is a mountainous valley in the northern part of the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan, formed by the Hunza River, bordering Ishkoman to the northwest, Shigar to the southeast, Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor to the north, and the Xinjiang region of China to the northeast.
November is the driest month with 2 mm of rainfall, while May, the wettest month, has an average precipitation of 29 mm. July is the warmest month of the year with an average temperature of 23.6 °C. The coldest month January has an average temperature of -3.0 °C.
The days are darker, snow may have started falling and the temperatures drop with the onset of winter. Despite this, November and December are still lively months, with holiday season festivals
The Ruby mines are famous tourist attractions. The Hunza valley is popular for its snow-capped and rough mountains. Many people came to Hunza just to get a few glimpses of the shining ice wall of the Rakaposhi Mountain. Other popular mountains in Hunza include Passu Peak, Ultra Peak, and Kuksel Sar.
Although never ruled directly by neighbouring Jammu and Kashmir, Hunza was a vassal of Jammu and Kashmir from the time of Maharaja Ranbir Singh of Jammu and Kashmir in 1860. The Mirs of Hunza sent an annual tribute to the China and Mirs of Nagar sent annual tribute to Maharaja Kashmir.
Climate of the Hunza Nagar district is moderate with average minimum and maximum temperatures of 16 and 35.9 °C, respectively. The annual average rainfall in the study area is 136.2 mm with minimum 2.1 mm in November and maximum 28.3 mm in April (Afsar et al. 2013;Qureshi et al. 2017). Selected glaciers for the study include the Batura, Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply.
Likewise, decrease in precipitation is also observed in the region (Yao et al. 2012). Due to this increase in the regional temperature and decrease in precipitation, this study shows general melting of selected glaciers from 1977 to 2014, which is in consistent with the observation of Afsar et al. (2013) for the Hunza Valley between 2007 and 2011.
