The Energy and Mass Balance of Peruvian Glaciers
Peruvian glaciers are important contributors to dry season runoff for agriculture and hydropower, but they are at risk of disappearing due to climate change. We applied a physically based, energy balance melt model at five on-glacier sites within the Peruvian Cordilleras Blanca and Vilcanota. Net sh...
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ftdatacite:10.3929/ethz-b-000520868 2023-05-15T16:38:11+02:00 The Energy and Mass Balance of Peruvian Glaciers Fyffe, Catriona L. Potter, Emily Fugger, Stefan Orr, Andrew Fatichi, Simone Medina, Katy Hellström, Robert Å. Bernat, Maud Aubry-Wake, Caroline Gurgiser, Wolfgang Baker Perry, Lester Suarez, Wilson Quincey, Duncan J. Pellicciotti, Francesca 2021 application/pdf https://dx.doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000520868 http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/520868 en eng ETH Zurich info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode cc-by-4.0 CC-BY energy balance Peruvian glaciers mass balance climate change Cordillera Blanca Cordillera Vilcanota article-journal Journal Article ScholarlyArticle Text 2021 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000520868 2022-04-01T10:01:42Z Peruvian glaciers are important contributors to dry season runoff for agriculture and hydropower, but they are at risk of disappearing due to climate change. We applied a physically based, energy balance melt model at five on-glacier sites within the Peruvian Cordilleras Blanca and Vilcanota. Net shortwave radiation dominates the energy balance, and despite this flux being higher in the dry season, melt rates are lower due to losses from net longwave radiation and the latent heat flux. The sensible heat flux is a relatively small contributor to melt energy. At three of the sites the wet season snowpack was discontinuous, forming and melting within a daily to weekly timescale, and resulting in highly variable melt rates closely related to precipitation dynamics. Cold air temperatures due to a strong La Niña year at Shallap Glacier (Cordillera Blanca) resulted in a continuous wet season snowpack, significantly reducing wet season ablation. Sublimation was most important at the highest site in the accumulation zone of the Quelccaya Ice Cap (Cordillera Vilcanota), accounting for 81% of ablation, compared to 2%–4% for the other sites. Air temperature and precipitation inputs were perturbed to investigate the climate sensitivity of the five glaciers. At the lower sites warmer air temperatures resulted in a switch from snowfall to rain, so that ablation was increased via the decrease in albedo and increase in net shortwave radiation. At the top of Quelccaya Ice Cap warming caused melting to replace sublimation so that ablation increased nonlinearly with air temperature. : Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 126 (23) : ISSN:0148-0227 : ISSN:2169-897X Text Ice cap DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
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Open Polar |
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DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
op_collection_id |
ftdatacite |
language |
English |
topic |
energy balance Peruvian glaciers mass balance climate change Cordillera Blanca Cordillera Vilcanota |
spellingShingle |
energy balance Peruvian glaciers mass balance climate change Cordillera Blanca Cordillera Vilcanota Fyffe, Catriona L. Potter, Emily Fugger, Stefan Orr, Andrew Fatichi, Simone Medina, Katy Hellström, Robert Å. Bernat, Maud Aubry-Wake, Caroline Gurgiser, Wolfgang Baker Perry, Lester Suarez, Wilson Quincey, Duncan J. Pellicciotti, Francesca The Energy and Mass Balance of Peruvian Glaciers |
topic_facet |
energy balance Peruvian glaciers mass balance climate change Cordillera Blanca Cordillera Vilcanota |
description |
Peruvian glaciers are important contributors to dry season runoff for agriculture and hydropower, but they are at risk of disappearing due to climate change. We applied a physically based, energy balance melt model at five on-glacier sites within the Peruvian Cordilleras Blanca and Vilcanota. Net shortwave radiation dominates the energy balance, and despite this flux being higher in the dry season, melt rates are lower due to losses from net longwave radiation and the latent heat flux. The sensible heat flux is a relatively small contributor to melt energy. At three of the sites the wet season snowpack was discontinuous, forming and melting within a daily to weekly timescale, and resulting in highly variable melt rates closely related to precipitation dynamics. Cold air temperatures due to a strong La Niña year at Shallap Glacier (Cordillera Blanca) resulted in a continuous wet season snowpack, significantly reducing wet season ablation. Sublimation was most important at the highest site in the accumulation zone of the Quelccaya Ice Cap (Cordillera Vilcanota), accounting for 81% of ablation, compared to 2%–4% for the other sites. Air temperature and precipitation inputs were perturbed to investigate the climate sensitivity of the five glaciers. At the lower sites warmer air temperatures resulted in a switch from snowfall to rain, so that ablation was increased via the decrease in albedo and increase in net shortwave radiation. At the top of Quelccaya Ice Cap warming caused melting to replace sublimation so that ablation increased nonlinearly with air temperature. : Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 126 (23) : ISSN:0148-0227 : ISSN:2169-897X |
format |
Text |
author |
Fyffe, Catriona L. Potter, Emily Fugger, Stefan Orr, Andrew Fatichi, Simone Medina, Katy Hellström, Robert Å. Bernat, Maud Aubry-Wake, Caroline Gurgiser, Wolfgang Baker Perry, Lester Suarez, Wilson Quincey, Duncan J. Pellicciotti, Francesca |
author_facet |
Fyffe, Catriona L. Potter, Emily Fugger, Stefan Orr, Andrew Fatichi, Simone Medina, Katy Hellström, Robert Å. Bernat, Maud Aubry-Wake, Caroline Gurgiser, Wolfgang Baker Perry, Lester Suarez, Wilson Quincey, Duncan J. Pellicciotti, Francesca |
author_sort |
Fyffe, Catriona L. |
title |
The Energy and Mass Balance of Peruvian Glaciers |
title_short |
The Energy and Mass Balance of Peruvian Glaciers |
title_full |
The Energy and Mass Balance of Peruvian Glaciers |
title_fullStr |
The Energy and Mass Balance of Peruvian Glaciers |
title_full_unstemmed |
The Energy and Mass Balance of Peruvian Glaciers |
title_sort |
energy and mass balance of peruvian glaciers |
publisher |
ETH Zurich |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
https://dx.doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000520868 http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11850/520868 |
genre |
Ice cap |
genre_facet |
Ice cap |
op_rights |
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode cc-by-4.0 |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000520868 |
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1766028480117473280 |