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

• 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: Environmental sciences; GE1-350; Geology; QE1-996.5; New Zealand; The Cryosphere
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-3425-2020; https://doaj.org/article/ae820bd5b66046d78ab3580afc82211c

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 ...