Variability in glacier albedo and links to annual mass balance for the gardens of Eden and Allah, Southern Alps, New Zealand

The gardens of Eden and Allah (GoEA) are two of New Zealand's largest ice fields. However, their remote location and protected conservation status have limited access and complicated monitoring and research efforts. To improve our understanding of the spatial and temporal changes in mass balanc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Cryosphere
Main Authors: A. J. Dowson, P. Sirguey, N. J. Cullen
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Copernicus Publications 2020
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-3425-2020
https://doaj.org/article/ae820bd5b66046d78ab3580afc82211c
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Summary:The gardens of Eden and Allah (GoEA) are two of New Zealand's largest ice fields. However, their remote location and protected conservation status have limited access and complicated monitoring and research efforts. To improve our understanding of the spatial and temporal changes in mass balance of these unique ice fields, observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors are used to monitor annual minimum glacier-wide albedo ( <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M1" display="inline" overflow="scroll" dspmath="mathml"><mrow><msubsup><mover accent="true"><mi mathvariant="italic">α</mi><mo mathvariant="normal">¯</mo></mover><mi mathvariant="normal">yr</mi><mi mathvariant="normal">min</mi></msubsup></mrow></math> <svg:svg xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="22pt" height="17pt" class="svg-formula" dspmath="mathimg" md5hash="5b9644d0a10a742f5d1b5314053dbb19"><svg:image xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="tc-14-3425-2020-ie00001.svg" width="22pt" height="17pt" src="tc-14-3425-2020-ie00001.png"/></svg:svg> ) over the period 2000–2018. The <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M2" display="inline" overflow="scroll" dspmath="mathml"><mrow><msubsup><mover accent="true"><mi mathvariant="italic">α</mi><mo mathvariant="normal">¯</mo></mover><mi mathvariant="normal">yr</mi><mi mathvariant="normal">min</mi></msubsup></mrow></math> <svg:svg xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="22pt" height="17pt" class="svg-formula" dspmath="mathimg" md5hash="e71f55b57f6b5740ca2812e509375d2b"><svg:image xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="tc-14-3425-2020-ie00002.svg" width="22pt" height="17pt" src="tc-14-3425-2020-ie00002.png"/></svg:svg> for 12 individual glaciers ranges between 0.42 and 0.70 and ...