Surface ablation and its drivers along a west–east transect of the Southern Patagonia Icefield

Bravo, Claudio; Ross, Andrew; Quincey, Duncan J.; Cisternas, Sebastián; Rivera, Andrés

doi:10.1017/jog.2021.92

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 78 publications

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“…The surface emissivity was assigned a typical value of ε s = 0.97 for snow and ice (Reid & Brock, 2010). For simplicity, Q LH over snow and ice surfaces was calculated only when the air temperature had reached ≥0°C, at which a saturated surface was assumed (RH s of 100%), similar to Bravo et al (2021). In other cases, the latent heat flux is set to 0.…”

Section: Modeling Snow and Clean Ice Melt (M S And M I )mentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying Supraglacial Debris‐Related Melt‐Altering Effects on the Djankuat Glacier, Caucasus, Russian Federation

Verhaegen,

Rybak,

Popovnin

et al. 2024

JGR Earth Surface

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We use a spatially distributed and physically based energy and mass balance model to derive the Østrem curve, which expresses the supraglacial debris‐related relative melt alteration versus the debris thickness, for the Djankuat Glacier, Caucasus, Russian Federation. The model is driven by meteorological data from two on‐glacier weather stations and ERA‐5 Land reanalysis data. A direct pixel‐by‐pixel comparison of the melt rates obtained from both a clean ice and debris‐covered ice mass balance model results in the quantification of debris‐related relative melt‐modification ratios, capturing the degree of melt enhancement or suppression as a function of the debris thickness. The main results show that the distinct surface features and different surface temperature/moisture and near‐surface wind regimes that persist over debris‐covered ice significantly alter the pattern of the energy and mass fluxes when compared to clean ice. Consequently, a maximum relative melt enhancement of 1.36 is modeled on the glacier for thin/patchy debris with a thickness of 0.03 m. However, insulating effects suppress sub‐debris melt under debris layers thicker than a critical debris thickness of 0.09 m. Sensitivity experiments show that especially within‐debris properties, such as the thermal conductivity and the vertical debris porosity gradient, highly impact the magnitude of the sub‐debris melt rates. Our results also highlight the scale‐dependency as well as the dynamic nature of the debris thickness‐melt relationship for changing climatic conditions, which may have significant implications for the climate change response of debris‐covered glaciers.

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Section: Modeling Snow and Clean Ice Melt (M S And M I )mentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying Supraglacial Debris‐Related Melt‐Altering Effects on the Djankuat Glacier, Caucasus, Russian Federation

Verhaegen,

Rybak,

Popovnin

et al. 2024

JGR Earth Surface

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“…This ECMWF reanalysis product covers the period from 1979 to the present, at a coarse resolution of 30 km. A higher resolution (ERA5 Land [97]) of 9 km, which has recently been used in southern Patagonia (i.e., [33,98,99]), is available. Here, we analyzed the ERA5 Land hourly temperature and total precipitation data to extend and compare climate variables with the MODIS snow reconstruction in the Brunswick Peninsula.…”

Section: Climatic Forcingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Snow Cover Reconstruction in the Brunswick Peninsula, Patagonia, Derived from a Combination of the Spectral Fusion, Mixture Analysis, and Temporal Interpolation of MODIS Data

Aguirre,

Bozkurt,

Sauter

et al. 2023

Remote Sensing

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Several methods based on satellite data products are available to estimate snow cover properties, each one with its pros and cons. This work proposes and implements a novel methodology that integrates three main processes applied to MODIS satellite data for snow cover property reconstruction: (1) the increase in the spatial resolution of MODIS (MOD09) data to 250 m using a spectral fusion technique; (2) a new proposal of snow-cloud discrimination; (3) the daily spatio-temporal reconstruction of snow extent and its albedo signature using the endmembers extraction and spectral mixture analyses. The snow cover reconstruction method was applied to the Brunswick Peninsula, Chilean Patagonia, a low-elevation (<1500 m a.s.l.) mid-latitude area. The results show a 98% agreement between MODIS snow detection and ground-based snow measurements at the automatic weather station, Tres Morros (53.3174°S, 71.2790°W), with fractional snow cover values between 20% and 50%, showing a close relationship between snow and vegetation type. The number of snow days compiled from the MODIS data indicates a good performance (Pearson’s correlation of 0.9) compared with the number of skiing days at the Cerro Mirador ski center, Punta Arenas. Although the number of seasonal snow days showed a significant increasing trend of 0.54 days/year in the Brunswick Peninsula during the 2000–2020 period, a significant decrease of −4.64 days/year was detected in 2010–2020.

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Climate and Surface Mass Balance at Glaciar Perito Moreno, Southern Patagonia

Minowa

Skvarca²,

Fujita

2023

Journal of Climate

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The mass budget of southern Patagonian glaciers is characterized by an extreme amount of surface ablation. To understand the processes controlling surface mass balance, we analyzed in situ data including meteorological variables and ablation stakes for the 25 years between 1996 and 2020 near the terminus of Glaciar Perito Moreno in southern Patagonia in South America. The mean annual temperature has increased over the study period at a rate of 0.2°C decade−1. An energy-balance model was applied to calculate a point surface mass balance, based on meteorological records. The average point surface mass balance is estimated to be −16.3 m water equivalent (w.e.) yr−1 between 1996 and 2020, decreasing at a rate in the range from −0.4 to −0.9 m w.e. yr−1 decade−1. The greatest contribution to the surface energy balance was due to the sensible heat flux, and its variation drove the surface mass balance variation. The meteorological and surface mass balance records were compared with the Southern Annular Mode and El Niño–Southern Oscillation, which change the atmospheric circulation over southern Patagonia and influence surface mass balance near the terminus of the glacier. Our long-term dataset investigates the detailed meteorological conditions and surface mass balance and their connection with the large-scale climate variability over the last 25 years, reported for the first time in Patagonia.

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Surface ablation and its drivers along a west–east transect of the Southern Patagonia Icefield

Cited by 4 publications

References 78 publications

Quantifying Supraglacial Debris‐Related Melt‐Altering Effects on the Djankuat Glacier, Caucasus, Russian Federation

Quantifying Supraglacial Debris‐Related Melt‐Altering Effects on the Djankuat Glacier, Caucasus, Russian Federation

Snow Cover Reconstruction in the Brunswick Peninsula, Patagonia, Derived from a Combination of the Spectral Fusion, Mixture Analysis, and Temporal Interpolation of MODIS Data

Climate and Surface Mass Balance at Glaciar Perito Moreno, Southern Patagonia

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