Climate change on the Quelccaya Ice Cap, Central Andes, and its relationship with the large-scale circulation

• Main Author: Yarleque Galvez, Christian Pedro
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Scholars Archive 2018
• Subjects: Central Andes; Future Projections; ice cap; Multiscale Analysis; Precipitation; Temperature; Ice caps; Atmospheric circulation; Precipitation (Meteorology); Glaciers; Climatic changes; Atmospheric Sciences; Environmental Sciences; Geophysics and Seismology; Ice cap
• Online Access: https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/legacy-etd/2197; https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/context/legacy-etd/article/3196/viewcontent/Yarleque_Galvez_YGwg3xW8gGeCHZs7LLKxiK.pdf

Glaciated areas over the central Andes are highly sensitive to atmospheric forcings, as demonstrated by their current accelerated retreat in response to global warming. The present Thesis is focused on quantifying and assessing future climate change impacts over Quelccaya ice cap (QIC), the world-largest tropical ice body, which is considered as a representative case of the tropical Andean cryosphere. I focused my study on characterizing large-scale forcing and future changes of precipitation and temperature, since they represent the most important variables for accumulation and ablation processes in glaciated mountain regions. In my research I developed tools to overcome the lack of in-situ information over mountain regions; I addressed the challenge to obtain accurate precipitation estimates from coarse-resolution global climate models (GCM), and developed projection of the future state and evolution of the QIC.