A Test Study of an Energy and Mass Balance Model Application to a Site on Urumqi Glacier No. 1, Chinese Tian Shan

Abstract

In this study, energy and mass balance is quantified using an energy balance model to represent the glacier melt of Urumqi Glacier No. 1, Chinese Tian Shan. Based on data from an Automatic Weather Station (4025 m a.s.l) and the mass balance field survey data nearby on the East Branch of the glacier, the “COupled Snowpack and Ice surface energy and Mass balance model” (COSIMA) was used to derive energy and mass balance simulations during the ablation season of 2018. Results show that the modeled cumulative mass balance (−0.67 ± 0.03 m w.e.) agrees well with the in-situ measurements (−0.64 ± 0.16 m w.e.) (r2 = 0.96) with the relative difference within 5% during the study period. The correlation coefficient between modeled and observed surface temperatures is 0.88 for daily means. The main source of melt energy at the glacier surface is net shortwave radiation (84%) and sensible heat flux (16%). The energy expenditures are from net longwave radiation (55%), heat flux for snow/ice melting (32%), latent heat flux of sublimation and evaporation (7%), and subsurface heat flux (6%). The sensitivity testing of mass balance shows that mass balance is more sensitive to temperature increase and precipitation decrease than temperature decrease and precipitation increase.

Changes in the End-of-Summer Snow Line Altitude of Summer-Accumulation-Type Glaciers in the Eastern Tien Shan Mountains from 1994 to 2016

“…In addition, in energy and mass balance simulation research on Urumqi Glacier No. 1, the threshold temperature of 1 • C is usually used to determine the amount of solid precipitation [35]. In this study, the length of the summer period was from 1 May to 31 August, and the length of the winter period was from 1 September to 30 April of the next year; thus, one year usually ranged from 1 September to 31 August of the next year.…”

Study on the Ablation of the Glacier Covered by Mineral Dust in Alpine Regions

“…Glacier mass balance is an important glaciological parameter used to characterize the accumulation and ablation of glaciers [1]. Glacier ablation is mainly influenced by many factors, such as air temperature, surface wind speed, and solar radiation energy [12]; solar radiation energy is one of the main energy sources for glacier ablation [13]. The amount of solar radiation energy absorbed by the glacier surface is determined by the albedo of the glacier surface [14].…”

“…Cuffey et al noted that the albedo value of fresh snow on the glacier surface can reach a maximum of 0.9 or higher, while the albedo of the contaminated glacier surface can be as low as 0.1 [17], so it is particularly important to study the mineral dust cover on the glacier surface. At present, the method used to study the glacier mass balance mainly involves the combination of remote sensing technology with a physical model to construct spatiotemporal monitoring and to study large-scale glaciers [12,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. Although great progress has been made in remote sensing technology [25,26], and the physical model of glacier ablation is constantly optimized [27,28], its accuracy is still insufficient [29][30][31][32] for small-scale glaciers near mining areas, which are greatly affected by mineral dust.…”

Raindrop size distribution characteristics in summer of a nival glacial zone in eastern Tianshan, Central Asia

“…The research in recent years was mainly focused on glacier variation (e.g., mass balance, ice temperature, albedo, etc.) and hydrological processes (Wang et al, 2018;Xu et al, 2018;Xu et al, 2019;Jia et al, 2020a;Wang et al, 2020;Yang et al, 2021;Li et al, 2022). The research on precipitation mainly focused on precipitation calibration (Yang et al, 1988;Yang et al, 1991;Goodison and Metcalfe, 1992;Yang et al, 1998;Ye et al, 2004) and its characteristics (Yang et al, 1992;Li et al, 2007;Li et al, 2011;Liu et al, 2011;Feng et al, 2013;Zhang et al, 2014;Jia et al, 2020b).…”