Interrogating glacier mass balance response to climatic change since the Little Ice Age: reconstructions for the Jotunheimen region, southern Norway

Developing a long‐term understanding of the cryosphere is important in the study of past climatic change. Here we used a nested approach combining diverse instrumental (monthly meteorological data from four weather stations, as well as gridded data) and proxy data (based on blue intensity measuremen...

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Published in:Boreas
Main Authors: Hiemstra, John F., Young, Giles H. F., Loader, Neil J., Gordon, Penny R.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/bor.12562
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/bor.12562
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full-xml/10.1111/bor.12562
id crwiley:10.1111/bor.12562
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spelling crwiley:10.1111/bor.12562 2024-06-23T07:53:04+00:00 Interrogating glacier mass balance response to climatic change since the Little Ice Age: reconstructions for the Jotunheimen region, southern Norway Hiemstra, John F. Young, Giles H. F. Loader, Neil J. Gordon, Penny R. 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/bor.12562 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/bor.12562 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full-xml/10.1111/bor.12562 en eng Wiley http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Boreas volume 51, issue 2, page 350-363 ISSN 0300-9483 1502-3885 journal-article 2021 crwiley https://doi.org/10.1111/bor.12562 2024-06-06T04:21:54Z Developing a long‐term understanding of the cryosphere is important in the study of past climatic change. Here we used a nested approach combining diverse instrumental (monthly meteorological data from four weather stations, as well as gridded data) and proxy data (based on blue intensity measurements from local tree ring records) to create a reconstruction of past summer temperature for the central Jotunheimen area in southern Norway. This record was then used to reconstruct annual glacier mass balance from 1962, the start of the yearly measurements, back to 1722, immediately prior to the regional Little Ice Age maximum. Our reconstruction of the ‘average’ Jotunheimen cumulative glacier mass balance is based on three representative glaciers (Storbreen, Hellstugubreen and Gråsubreen) that were synthesized into one composite record which we term ‘Gjennomsnittsbreen’ (‘mean glacier’ in Norwegian) to filter out localized controls on the behaviour of individual glaciers. While not ignoring the role of precipitation on glacier mass balance, our reconstruction demonstrates that glaciers in this region exhibit a strong summer temperature control and appear to have been declining more or less continuously since the mid‐18th century. However, it also shows that this long‐term trend of overall retreat in Jotunheimen is punctuated by relatively short‐lived periods of neutral or occasionally positive glacier mass balance, signifying periods of stillstand or small‐scale glacier advance. These periods or ‘events’ in our reconstruction were compared with an independent record of 12 moraine‐building events developed using lichenometry. A minimum of 10 of the moraine‐building events identifiable in our reconstruction were also identifiable in the lichenometric data which affords confidence in the performance of our interrogative model. A critical implication of this successful glacier mass balance reconstruction based on just summer temperature is that for Jotunheimen – in contrast to Norwegian maritime glaciers further to the ... Article in Journal/Newspaper glacier Wiley Online Library Norway Storbreen ENVELOPE(8.269,8.269,62.521,62.521) Boreas
institution Open Polar
collection Wiley Online Library
op_collection_id crwiley
language English
description Developing a long‐term understanding of the cryosphere is important in the study of past climatic change. Here we used a nested approach combining diverse instrumental (monthly meteorological data from four weather stations, as well as gridded data) and proxy data (based on blue intensity measurements from local tree ring records) to create a reconstruction of past summer temperature for the central Jotunheimen area in southern Norway. This record was then used to reconstruct annual glacier mass balance from 1962, the start of the yearly measurements, back to 1722, immediately prior to the regional Little Ice Age maximum. Our reconstruction of the ‘average’ Jotunheimen cumulative glacier mass balance is based on three representative glaciers (Storbreen, Hellstugubreen and Gråsubreen) that were synthesized into one composite record which we term ‘Gjennomsnittsbreen’ (‘mean glacier’ in Norwegian) to filter out localized controls on the behaviour of individual glaciers. While not ignoring the role of precipitation on glacier mass balance, our reconstruction demonstrates that glaciers in this region exhibit a strong summer temperature control and appear to have been declining more or less continuously since the mid‐18th century. However, it also shows that this long‐term trend of overall retreat in Jotunheimen is punctuated by relatively short‐lived periods of neutral or occasionally positive glacier mass balance, signifying periods of stillstand or small‐scale glacier advance. These periods or ‘events’ in our reconstruction were compared with an independent record of 12 moraine‐building events developed using lichenometry. A minimum of 10 of the moraine‐building events identifiable in our reconstruction were also identifiable in the lichenometric data which affords confidence in the performance of our interrogative model. A critical implication of this successful glacier mass balance reconstruction based on just summer temperature is that for Jotunheimen – in contrast to Norwegian maritime glaciers further to the ...
format Article in Journal/Newspaper
author Hiemstra, John F.
Young, Giles H. F.
Loader, Neil J.
Gordon, Penny R.
spellingShingle Hiemstra, John F.
Young, Giles H. F.
Loader, Neil J.
Gordon, Penny R.
Interrogating glacier mass balance response to climatic change since the Little Ice Age: reconstructions for the Jotunheimen region, southern Norway
author_facet Hiemstra, John F.
Young, Giles H. F.
Loader, Neil J.
Gordon, Penny R.
author_sort Hiemstra, John F.
title Interrogating glacier mass balance response to climatic change since the Little Ice Age: reconstructions for the Jotunheimen region, southern Norway
title_short Interrogating glacier mass balance response to climatic change since the Little Ice Age: reconstructions for the Jotunheimen region, southern Norway
title_full Interrogating glacier mass balance response to climatic change since the Little Ice Age: reconstructions for the Jotunheimen region, southern Norway
title_fullStr Interrogating glacier mass balance response to climatic change since the Little Ice Age: reconstructions for the Jotunheimen region, southern Norway
title_full_unstemmed Interrogating glacier mass balance response to climatic change since the Little Ice Age: reconstructions for the Jotunheimen region, southern Norway
title_sort interrogating glacier mass balance response to climatic change since the little ice age: reconstructions for the jotunheimen region, southern norway
publisher Wiley
publishDate 2021
url http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/bor.12562
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/bor.12562
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full-xml/10.1111/bor.12562
long_lat ENVELOPE(8.269,8.269,62.521,62.521)
geographic Norway
Storbreen
geographic_facet Norway
Storbreen
genre glacier
genre_facet glacier
op_source Boreas
volume 51, issue 2, page 350-363
ISSN 0300-9483 1502-3885
op_rights http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
op_doi https://doi.org/10.1111/bor.12562
container_title Boreas
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