Poleward shift of subtropical highs drives Patagonian glacier mass loss.

[en] Patagonian glaciers have been rapidly losing mass in the last two decades, but the driving processes remain poorly known. Here we use two state-of-the-art regional climate models to reconstruct long-term (1940-2023) glacier surface mass balance (SMB), i.e., the difference between precipitation accumulation, surface runoff and sublimation, at about 5 km spatial resolution, further statistically downscaled to 500 m. High-resolution SMB agrees well with in-situ observations and, combined with solid ice discharge estimates, captures recent GRACE/GRACE-FO satellite mass change. Glacier mass loss coincides with a long-term SMB decline (-0.35 Gt yr-2), primarily driven by enhanced surface runoff (+0.47 Gt yr-2) and steady precipitation. We link these trends to a poleward shift of the subtropical highs favouring warm northwesterly air advections towards Patagonia (+0.14°C dec-1 at 850 hPa). Since the 1940s, Patagonian glaciers have lost 1350 ± 449 Gt of ice, equivalent to 3.7 ± 1.2 mm of global mean sea-level rise.

Research Center/Unit :

SPHERES - ULiège

Disciplines :

Earth sciences & physical geography

Author, co-author :

Noël, Brice ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de géographie > Climatologie et Topoclimatologie

Lhermitte, Stef ; Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium ; Department of Geoscience & Remote Sensing, Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands

Wouters, Bert ; Department of Geoscience & Remote Sensing, Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands

Fettweis, Xavier ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de géographie > Climatologie et Topoclimatologie

Language :

English

Title :

Poleward shift of subtropical highs drives Patagonian glacier mass loss.

Publication date :

23 April 2025

Journal title :

Nature Communications

eISSN :

2041-1723

Publisher :

Springer Science and Business Media LLC, England

Volume :

Issue :

Pages :

3795

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Tags :

CÉCI : Consortium des Équipements de Calcul Intensif
Tier-1 supercomputer

Additional URL :

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-58974-1.pdf

European Projects :

HE - 101184621 - ICELINK - Advancing Knowledge of North Atlantic Land ICE - LINKing Observations and Models

Funders :

F.R.S.-FNRS - Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique
European Union

Available on ORBi :

since 23 April 2025

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