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...
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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...
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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...
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In: Journal of Hydrology, 2014, vol. 510, p. 35–48
Glacier response to a changing climate and its impact on runoff is understood in general terms, but model-based projections are affected by considerable uncertainties. They originate from the driving climate model, input data quality, and simplifications in the glacio-hydrological model and hamper the reliability of the simulations. Here, an integrative assessment of the uncertainty in 21st...
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In: Environmental Research Letters, 2013, vol. 8, no. 3, p. 035048
Climate models project considerable ranges and uncertainties in future climatic changes. To assess the potential impacts of climatic changes on mountain permafrost within these ranges of uncertainty, this study presents a sensitivity analysis using a permafrost process model combined with climate input based on delta-change approaches. Delta values comprise a multitude of coupled air temperature...
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In: Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, 2013, vol. 18, no. 2, p. 780–794
Climate change as projected by contemporary general circulation models (GCMs) and regional climate models (RCMs) will have a great impact on high latitude and high mountain permafrost. A process-based one-dimensional permafrost model is used to evaluate the sensitivity of two characteristic alpine permafrost sites to changes in climate for a 110 year time period starting 1991 and ending 2100...
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In: The Cryosphere, 2013, vol. 7, p. 103-118
The role of glaciers as temporal water reservoirs is particularly pronounced in the (outer) tropics because of the very distinct wet/dry seasons. Rapid glacier retreat caused by climatic changes is thus a major concern, and decision makers demand urgently for regional/local glacier evolution trends, ice mass estimates and runoff assessments. However, in remote mountain areas, spatial and temporal...
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In: Environmental Research Letters, 2012, vol. 7, no. 4, p. 044001
While there is general consensus that observed global mean air temperature has increased during the past few decades and will very likely continue to rise in the coming decades, the assessment of the effective impacts of increased global mean air temperature on a specific regional-scale system remains highly challenging. This study takes up the widely discussed concept of limiting global mean...
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In: Meteorologische Zeitschrift, 2010, vol. 19, no. 5, p. 491-500
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In: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 2010, vol. 368, no. 1919, p. 2435-2459
The number of large slope failures in some high-mountain regions such as the European Alps has increased during the past two to three decades. There is concern that recent climate change is driving this increase in slope failures, thus possibly further exacerbating the hazard in the future. Although the effects of a gradual temperature rise on glaciers and permafrost have been extensively...
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