In: Meteorologische Zeitschrift, 2016, p. 501–509
Knowing the height of the snowfall limit during precipitation events is crucial for better understanding a number of hydro-climatic processes, for instance glacier-climate interactions or runoff from high mountain catchments. However, knowledge on heights of the phase change during precipitation events is limited by the small number of meteorological measurements available at high altitudes,...
|
In: The Cryosphere, 2016, vol. 10, no. 6, p. 2693–2719
Permafrost is a widespread phenomenon in mountainous regions of the world such as the European Alps. Many important topics such as the future evolution of permafrost related to climate change and the detection of permafrost related to potential natural hazards sites are of major concern to our society. Numerical permafrost models are the only tools which allow for the projection of the future...
|
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...
|
In: Front. Earth Sci. - Cryospheric Sciences, 2016, p. 18
A re-analysis is presented here of a 10 year mass balance series at Findelengletscher, a temperate mountain glacier in Switzerland. Calculating glacier-wide mass balance from the set of glaciological point balance observations using conventional approaches, such as the profile or contour method, resulted in significant deviations from the reference value given by the geodetic mass...
|
In: Journal of Glaciology, 2015, vol. 61, no. 230, p. 1103–1117
Abramov glacier, located in the Pamir Alay, Kyrgyzstan, is a reference glacier within the Global Terrestrial Network for Glaciers. Long-term glaciological measurements exist from 1968 to 1998 and a mass-balance monitoring programme was re-established in 2011. In this study we re-analyse existing mass-balance data and use a spatially distributed mass-balance model to provide continuous seasonal...
|
In: Environmental Science & Policy, 2015, vol. 47, p. 80–94
As significant impacts of climate change are increasingly considered unavoidable, adaptation has become a policy priority. It is generally agreed that science is important for the adaptation process but specific guidance on how and to what degree science should contribute and be embedded in this process is still limited which is at odds with the high demand for science contributions to climate...
|
In: The Cryosphere, 2014, vol. 8, no. 6, p. 2313–2333
Ice volume estimates are crucial for assessing water reserves stored in glaciers. Due to its large glacier coverage, such estimates are of particular interest for the Himalayan–Karakoram (HK) region. In this study, different existing methodologies are used to estimate the ice reserves: three area–volume relations, one slope-dependent volume estimation method, and two ice-thickness...
|
In: Journal of Hydrology, 2014, vol. 518, Part B, p. 225–234
Glacier and snow cover changes with related impacts on melt runoff can seriously affect human societies which are depending on fresh water from cryospheric sources. Observed trends and projected future evolutions of climatic and cryospheric variables clearly show the need to adapt to these changes. Accordingly, the topics addressed herein have been put on the agendas of many larger funding...
|
In: Global and Planetary Change, 2014, vol. 119, p. 85–97
The total glacial area of the Cordillera Blanca, Peru, has shrunk by more than 30% in the period of 1930 to the present with a marked glacier retreat also in the recent decades. The aim of this paper is to assess local air temperature and precipitation changes in the Cordillera Blanca and to discuss how these variables could have affected the observed glacier retreat between the 1980s and...
|
In: Annals of Glaciology, 2013, vol. 54, no. 63, p. 75–83
This study presents a method that allows continuous monitoring of mass balance for remote or inaccessible glaciers, based on repeated oblique photography. Hourly to daily pictures from two automatic cameras overlooking two large valley glaciers in the Swiss Alps are available for eight ablation seasons (2004–11) in total. We determine the fraction of snow-covered glacier surface from...
|
