Université de Fribourg

The freezing level in the tropical Andes, Peru: An indicator for present and future glacier extents: the freezing level in the tropical Andes

Schauwecker, Simone ; Rohrer, Mario ; Huggel, Christian ; Endries, Jason ; Montoya, Nilton ; Neukom, Raphael ; Perry, Baker ; Salzmann, Nadine ; Schwarb, Manfred ; Suarez, Wilson

In: Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 2017, vol. 122, no. 10, p. 5172–5189

Along with air temperatures, the freezing level height (FLH) has risen over the last decades. The mass balance of tropical glaciers in Peru is highly sensitive to a rise in the FLH, mainly due to a decrease in accumulation and increase of energy for ablation caused by reduced albedo. Knowledge of future changes in the FLH is thus crucial to estimating changes in glacier extents. Since in situ...

Université de Fribourg

Robust climate scenarios for sites with sparse observations: a two-step bias correction approach

Rajczak, Jan ; Kotlarski, Sven ; Salzmann, Nadine ; Schär, Christoph

In: International Journal of Climatology, 2016, vol. 36, no. 3, p. 1226–1243

Observed and projected climatic changes demand for robust assessments of climate impacts on various environmental and anthropogenic systems. Empirical-statistical downscaling (ESD) methods coupled to output from climate model projections are promising tools to assess impacts at regional to local scale. ESD methods correct for common model deficiencies in accuracy (e.g. model biases) and scale...