Very high resolution surface mass balance of Svalbard with the regional climate model MAR

We present climate and surface mass balance (SMB) results over Svalbard simulated by a new version of the regional climate MAR model allowing to reach ∼km resolution without highly time-consuming runs.
Spitsbergen, the largest island of the Svalbard archipelago, has a very hilly topography and, as the SMB strongly depends on the local topography and ice distribution, we need a high spatial resolution to accurately represent the SMB of Svalbard and its complex spatial distribution. However, higher resolution simulations are also very time consuming.
That is why we have developed a new version of the MAR model in which the atmospheric module runs at a resolution of 7.5 km and the snow/ice module runs at a resolution of 3.75 km.
Simulations over 1960-2014 forced by ERA show better agreement with SMB observations compared to our recent 10 km resolution recently published results.