In: Cold Regions Science and Technology, 2015, vol. 118, p. 64–75
Observations show that considerable amounts of snow can accumulate in steep, rough rock walls. The heterogeneously distributed snow cover significantly affects the surface energy balance and hence the thermal regime of the rock walls.To assess the small-scale variability of snow depth and rock temperatures in steep north and south facing rock walls, a spatially distributed multi-method approach...
|
In: Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research, 2014, vol. 46, no. 4, p. 933–945
In view of the rapid and accelerating glacier retreat observed in the European Alps during the last decades, the repeated creation of glacier inventories is important to understand the spatio-temporal variability of glacier changes and to support modeling studies. This article presents the latest glacier inventory for the entire Swiss Alps (SGI2010) derived by manual digitization from...
|
In: Global and Planetary Change, 2013, vol. 110, Part A, p. 62–73
A conceptual hydrological model was set up in the upper Panj catchment, the main tributary of Amu-Darya river. After a manual calibration procedure involving model runs with different restrictions, the model reproduced both daily hydrographs of Tanimas river at the Rukhk gauging station (NSE = 0.86) and the snow water equivalent of the Irkht station (R2 = 0.85) in a very satisfactory way. Based...
|
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...
|
In: Journal of Glaciology, 2013, vol. 59, no. 218, p. 1047–1059
Snow accumulation is an important component of the mass balance of alpine glaciers. To improve our understanding of the processes related to accumulation and their representation in state-of-the-art mass-balance models, extensive field measurements are required. We present measurements of snow accumulation distribution on Findelengletscher, Switzerland, for April 2010 using (1) in situ snow...
|
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...
|
In: The Cryosphere, 2012, vol. 6, p. 517-531
Compared to lowland (polar) regions, permafrost in high mountain areas occurs in a large variety of surface and subsurface materials and textures. This work presents an eight-year (2002–2010) data set of borehole temperatures for five different (sub-) surface materials from a high alpine permafrost area, Murtèl-Corvatsch, Switzerland. The influence of the material on the thermal regime was...
|
In: The Cryosphere, 2011, vol. 5, no. 1, p. 231-243
A range of englacial temperature measurements was acquired in the Monte Rosa area at the border of Switzerland and Italy in the years 1982, 1991, 1994, 1995, 1999, 2000, 2003, 2007 and 2008. Englacial temperatures revealed no evidence of warming at the firn saddle of Colle Gnifetti at 4452 m a.s.l. between 1982 and 1991, the 1991 to 2000 period showed an increase of 0.05 °C per year at a depth...
|
In: Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, 2011, vol. 21, no. 4, p. 325–334
A coupled heat and mass transfer model simulating mass and energy balance of the soil-snow-atmosphere boundary layer was applied to simulate ground temperatures, together with water and ice content evolution, in the active layer of an alpine permafrost site on Schilthorn, Swiss Alps. Abrupt shifts and subsequent fluctuations in ground temperature observed in alpine permafrost boreholes at the...
|
In: Journal of Geophysical Research, 2009, vol. 114, p. D19106
This study aims at giving a methodical description of the use of gridded output from a regional climate model (RCM) for the calculation of glacier mass balance distribution for the perimeter of the Swiss Alps. The mass balance model runs at daily steps and 100 m spatial resolution, while the regional model (REMO) RCM provides daily grids (∼18 km resolution) of dynamically downscaled reanalysis...
|
