Nonlinear sensitivity of glacier mass balance to future climate change unveiled by deep learning

Glaciers and ice caps are experiencing strong mass losses worldwide, challenging water availability, hydropower generation, and ecosystems. Here, we perform the first-ever glacier evolution projections based on deep learning by modelling the 21st century glacier evolution in the French Alps. By the end of the century, we predict a glacier...

Modelling supraglacial debris-cover evolution from the single-glacier to the regional scale: an application to High Mountain Asia

Currently, about 12ĝ€¯%-13ĝ€¯% of High Mountain Asia's glacier area is debris-covered, which alters its surface mass balance. However, in regional-scale modelling approaches, debris-covered glaciers are typically treated as clean-ice glaciers, leading to a bias when modelling their future evolution. Here, we present a new approach for...

Ice-Dynamical Glacier Evolution Modeling—A Review

Glaciers play a crucial role in the Earth System: they are important water suppliers to lower-lying areas during hot and dry periods, and they are major contributors to the observed present-day sea-level rise. Glaciers can also act as a source of natural hazards and have a major touristic value. Given their societal importance, there is large...

Coupling a global glacier model to a global hydrological model prevents underestimation of glacier runoff

Global hydrological models have become a valuable tool for a range of global impact studies related to water resources. However, glacier parameterization is often simplistic or non-existent in global hydrological models. By contrast, global glacier models do represent complex glacier dynamics and glacier evolution, and as such, they hold the...

Future water temperature of rivers in Switzerland under climate change investigated with physics-based models

River ecosystems are highly sensitive to climate change and projected future increase in air temperature is expected to increase the stress for these ecosystems. Rivers are also an important socio-economic factor impacting, amongst others, agriculture, tourism, electricity production, and drinking water supply and quality. In addition to...

Unexplored Antarctic meteorite collection sites revealed through machine learning

Meteorites provide a unique view into the origin and evolution of the Solar System. Antarctica is the most productive region for recovering meteorites, where these extraterrestrial rocks concentrate at meteorite stranding zones. To date, meteorite-bearing blue ice areas are mostly identified by serendipity and through costly reconnaissance...

Limited impact of climate forcing products on future glacier evolution in Scandinavia and Iceland

Due to climate change, worldwide glaciers are rapidly declining. The trend will continue into the future, with consequences for sea level, water availability and tourism. Here, we assess the future evolution of all glaciers in Scandinavia and Iceland until 2100 using the coupled surface mass-balance ice-flow model GloGEMflow. The model is...

Future changes in annual, seasonal and monthly runoff signatures in contrasting Alpine catchments in Austria

Hydrological regimes of alpine catchments are expected to be strongly affected by climate change, mostly due to their dependence on snow and ice dynamics. While seasonal changes have been studied extensively, studies on changes in the timing and magnitude of annual extremes remain rare. This study investigates the effects of climate change on...

Estimating surface mass balance patterns from unoccupied aerial vehicle measurements in the ablation area of the Morteratsch-Pers glacier complex (Switzerland)

The surface mass balance (SMB) of a glacier provides the link between the glacier and the local climate. For this reason, it is intensively studied and monitored. However, major efforts are required to determine the point SMB at a sufficient number of locations to capture the heterogeneity of the SMB pattern. Furthermore, because of the time...

Brief communication: Do 1.0, 1.5, or 2.0° C matter for the future evolution of Alpine glaciers?

With the Paris Agreement, the urgency of limiting ongoing anthropogenic climate change has been recognised. More recent discussions have focused on the difference of limiting the increase in global average temperatures below 1.0, 1.5, or 2.0g C compared to preindustrial levels. Here, we assess the impacts that such different scenarios would...

Projected land ice contributions to twenty-first-century sea level rise

The land ice contribution to global mean sea level rise has not yet been predicted¹ using ice sheet and glacier models for the latest set of socio-economic scenarios, nor using coordinated exploration of uncertainties arising from the various computer models involved. Two recent international projects generated a large suite of...

The impact of climate change and glacier mass loss on the hydrology in the Mont-Blanc massif

The Mont-Blanc massif, being iconic with its large glaciers and peaks of over 4,000 m, will experience a sharp increase in summer temperatures during the twenty-first century. By 2100, the impact of climate change on the cryosphere and hydrosphere in the Alps is expected to lead to a decrease in annual river discharge. In this work, we...

On the Imbalance and Response Time of Glaciers in the European Alps

Glaciers in the European Alps rapidly lose mass to adapt to changes in climate conditions. Here, we investigate the relationship and lag between climate forcing and geometric glacier response with a regional glacier evolution model accounting for ice dynamics. The volume loss occurring as a result of the glacier-climate imbalance increased...

Partitioning the Uncertainty of Ensemble Projections of Global Glacier Mass Change

Glacier mass loss is recognized as a major contributor to current sea level rise. However, large uncertainties remain in projections of glacier mass loss on global and regional scales. We present an ensemble of 288 glacier mass and area change projections for the 21st century based on 11 glacier models using up to 10 general circulation...