Melting Characteristics of Snow Cover on Tidewater Glaciers in Hornsund Fjord, Svalbard
In recent years, the Svalbard area, especially its southern section, has been characterised by an exceptionally thin snow cover, which has a significant impact of the annual mass balance of glaciers. The objective of this study was to determine melting processes of the snow cover deposited on 11 gla...
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ftunivsilesia:oai:rebus.us.edu.pl:20.500.12128/8714 2023-05-15T15:08:10+02:00 Melting Characteristics of Snow Cover on Tidewater Glaciers in Hornsund Fjord, Svalbard Laska, Michał Barzycka, Barbara Luks, Bartłomiej 2018 https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12128/8714 https://doi.org/10.3390/w9100804 en eng Water (Switzerland), Vol. 9, Issue 10 (2017), art. no. 804 2073-4441 http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12128/8714 doi:10.3390/w9100804 Uznanie autorstwa 3.0 Polska http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/pl/ CC-BY Arctic climate change freshwater Landsat 8 Snow-Covered Area supervised classification info:eu-repo/semantics/article 2018 ftunivsilesia https://doi.org/20.500.12128/8714 https://doi.org/10.3390/w9100804 2022-12-31T20:12:19Z In recent years, the Svalbard area, especially its southern section, has been characterised by an exceptionally thin snow cover, which has a significant impact of the annual mass balance of glaciers. The objective of this study was to determine melting processes of the snow cover deposited on 11 glaciers that terminate into Hornsund Fjord during the melting period of 2014. The study included analyses of snow pits and snow cores, meteorological data collected from automatic weather stations and Polish Polar Station Hornsund, and supervised classification of six Landsat 8 images for assessing the progress of snow cover melting. The calculated Snow-Covered Area (SCA) varied from 98% at the beginning of the melting season to 43% at the end of August. The melting vertical gradient on Hansbreen was -0.34 m 100 m-1, leading to surface melting of -1.4 cm water equivalent (w.e.) day-1 in the ablation zone (c. 200 m a.s.l. (above sea level)) and -0.7 cm w.e. day-1 in the accumulation zone (c. 400 m a.s.l.). Furthermore, the study identified several observed features such as low snow depth in the accumulation zone of the Hornsund glaciers, a large proportion of the snow layers (12-27%) produced by rain-on-snow events, and a frequent occurrence of summer thermal inversions (80% annually), indicating that the area is experiencing intensive climate changes. Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Climate change Hornsund Svalbard The Repository of the University of Silesia (RE-BUŚ) Arctic Svalbard Hornsund ENVELOPE(15.865,15.865,76.979,76.979) Hansbreen ENVELOPE(15.650,15.650,77.075,77.075) Water 9 10 804 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
The Repository of the University of Silesia (RE-BUŚ) |
op_collection_id |
ftunivsilesia |
language |
English |
topic |
Arctic climate change freshwater Landsat 8 Snow-Covered Area supervised classification |
spellingShingle |
Arctic climate change freshwater Landsat 8 Snow-Covered Area supervised classification Laska, Michał Barzycka, Barbara Luks, Bartłomiej Melting Characteristics of Snow Cover on Tidewater Glaciers in Hornsund Fjord, Svalbard |
topic_facet |
Arctic climate change freshwater Landsat 8 Snow-Covered Area supervised classification |
description |
In recent years, the Svalbard area, especially its southern section, has been characterised by an exceptionally thin snow cover, which has a significant impact of the annual mass balance of glaciers. The objective of this study was to determine melting processes of the snow cover deposited on 11 glaciers that terminate into Hornsund Fjord during the melting period of 2014. The study included analyses of snow pits and snow cores, meteorological data collected from automatic weather stations and Polish Polar Station Hornsund, and supervised classification of six Landsat 8 images for assessing the progress of snow cover melting. The calculated Snow-Covered Area (SCA) varied from 98% at the beginning of the melting season to 43% at the end of August. The melting vertical gradient on Hansbreen was -0.34 m 100 m-1, leading to surface melting of -1.4 cm water equivalent (w.e.) day-1 in the ablation zone (c. 200 m a.s.l. (above sea level)) and -0.7 cm w.e. day-1 in the accumulation zone (c. 400 m a.s.l.). Furthermore, the study identified several observed features such as low snow depth in the accumulation zone of the Hornsund glaciers, a large proportion of the snow layers (12-27%) produced by rain-on-snow events, and a frequent occurrence of summer thermal inversions (80% annually), indicating that the area is experiencing intensive climate changes. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Laska, Michał Barzycka, Barbara Luks, Bartłomiej |
author_facet |
Laska, Michał Barzycka, Barbara Luks, Bartłomiej |
author_sort |
Laska, Michał |
title |
Melting Characteristics of Snow Cover on Tidewater Glaciers in Hornsund Fjord, Svalbard |
title_short |
Melting Characteristics of Snow Cover on Tidewater Glaciers in Hornsund Fjord, Svalbard |
title_full |
Melting Characteristics of Snow Cover on Tidewater Glaciers in Hornsund Fjord, Svalbard |
title_fullStr |
Melting Characteristics of Snow Cover on Tidewater Glaciers in Hornsund Fjord, Svalbard |
title_full_unstemmed |
Melting Characteristics of Snow Cover on Tidewater Glaciers in Hornsund Fjord, Svalbard |
title_sort |
melting characteristics of snow cover on tidewater glaciers in hornsund fjord, svalbard |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12128/8714 https://doi.org/10.3390/w9100804 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(15.865,15.865,76.979,76.979) ENVELOPE(15.650,15.650,77.075,77.075) |
geographic |
Arctic Svalbard Hornsund Hansbreen |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Svalbard Hornsund Hansbreen |
genre |
Arctic Climate change Hornsund Svalbard |
genre_facet |
Arctic Climate change Hornsund Svalbard |
op_relation |
Water (Switzerland), Vol. 9, Issue 10 (2017), art. no. 804 2073-4441 http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12128/8714 doi:10.3390/w9100804 |
op_rights |
Uznanie autorstwa 3.0 Polska http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/pl/ |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/20.500.12128/8714 https://doi.org/10.3390/w9100804 |
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Water |
container_volume |
9 |
container_issue |
10 |
container_start_page |
804 |
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