| Summary: | International audience The 50 year time series of mass balance on Glacier de Sarennes is one of the longest in the French Alps, and so is often used as a reference for glacier variations in the French Alps. Meteorological data can be used to extend the series backwards in time. Martin (1978) proposed such a reconstruction for the 1882-1977 period. With 50 years of observations, we show that the classical method used by Martin is too dependent oil the calibration period. We therefore try to improve the accuracy of this reconstruction using the Vincent and Vallon (1997) method which takes into account the albedo change of the surface during the ablation period (this is called the daily method). This new method appears to be stable in time. Once calibrated, the daily method is applied to reconstruct the 1881-1949 period. The new reconstruction is compared to a volumetric balance between two maps from 1906 and 1981. It appears that both reconstructions (classical and daily) fall to render the trend correctly over a long period of time. The cumulative centred mass balance correlates well (r(2) = 0.62) with the hydrological mass-balance series of Aletschgletscher, Switzerland.
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