accumulation; glacier mass balance; surface mass budget; Earth-Surface Processes
Abstract :
[en] Patagonia Icefields are large ice masses with a significant contribution to sea level rise among mountain glaciers in the Southern Hemisphere. In order to improve the estimation of the Northern Patagonia Icefield (NPI) surface mass balance and to better understand its relationship with climate variables and modes, we simulated the surface mass balance over the icefield during the period 1980–2014 with the MAR model. Model reliability was assessed against: weather stations, albedo from MODIS data and previous estimates of the San Rafael glacier’s surface mass balance. We obtain a surface mass balance of –2.48 ± 1.86 Gta–1 and a non-significant trend. Temperature (a physically downscaled variable) was a key variable through its direct impact on melting, but also on solid precipitation. We found that the annual, spring and autumn icefield mean surface mass balance had a significant negative correlation with the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) through air temperature. Over the next century, the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions are projected to keep the SAM in a positive phase and accelerate atmospheric warming. Thus, the NPI is expected to increase its mass loss and its contribution to future sea level rise. However, more in-situ data (precipitation, temperature and accumulation/ablation on the icefield) are needed to improve the projection’s uncertainty.
Research Center/Unit :
SPHERES - ULiège
Disciplines :
Earth sciences & physical geography
Author, co-author :
Collao-Barrios, Gabriela; Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement, CNRS, IRD, INRAE, Grenoble-INP, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France
Favier, Vincent; Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement, CNRS, IRD, INRAE, Grenoble-INP, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France
Gillet-Chaulet, Fabien ; Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement, CNRS, IRD, INRAE, Grenoble-INP, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France
Fettweis, Xavier ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de géographie > Climatologie et Topoclimatologie
Gallee, Hubert ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de géographie > Climatologie et Topoclimatologie ; Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement, CNRS, IRD, INRAE, Grenoble-INP, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France
Santolaria-Otín, María; Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement, CNRS, IRD, INRAE, Grenoble-INP, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France ; Group of Meteorology, Universitat de Barcelona (UB), Barcelona, Spain
Davaze, Lucaz; Mediation Climat, Grenoble, France
Raleigh, Mark S.; College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, United States
Language :
English
Title :
Surface mass balance of the Northern Patagonian Ice Field and links with climate variability modes and atmospheric variables
This work was supported by the Chilean National Commission of Scientific and Technological Research CONICYT through a doctoral scholarship (Becas Chile) and was partly funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche through contract ANR-14-CE01-0001-01 (ASUMA). We thank Marius Schaefer for providing his surface mass-balance results and advice and the Unidad de Glaciolog\u00EDa y Nieves DGA (Direcci\u00F3n General de Aguas) for providing data. All model simulations presented in this paper were performed using the Froggy platform of the CIMENT infrastructure ( https://ciment.ujf-grenoble.fr ), supported by the Rh\u00F4ne-Alpes region (GRANT CPER07 13 CIRA), the OSUG@2020 labex (reference ANR10 LABX56), the Equip@Meso project (reference ANR-10-EQPX-29-01). GC-B particularly thanks Project DELTA ANR-22-CE01-0021 for funding her postdoc position and this article.
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