glaciation

Ocean Expedition Sets Sail to Probe Glacier Changes

Mountain glaciers are like giant sandpaper blocks, scouring their valley homes as they advance and retreat. This scrubbing tends to purge any past record of a glacier's size, foiling scientists' efforts to model the extent of mountain ice during past climate shifts.

The good news is the sediments scoured from the land by glaciers eventually ends up dumped offshore, in the ocean....

Implementation of a process-based catchment model in a poorly gauged, highly glacierized Himalayan headwater
The paper presents a catchment modeling approach for remote glacierized Himalayan catchments. The distributed catchment model TACD, which is widely based on the HBV model, was further developed for the application in highly glacierized catchments on a daily timestep and applied to the Nepalese Himalayan headwater Langtang Khola (360 km2). Low laying reference stations are taken for temperature...
Mapping and morphometric analysis of glaciers in Jotunheimen, South Norway, during the “Little Ice Age” maximum
This study provides mapping and analysis of the maximum glacier extent during the "Little Ice Age" in Jotunheimen, Southern Norway, on a regional scale. Remote sensing techniques were used to map the glacier area at the maximum of the "Little Ice Age" (mid 18th century AD). For validation of the mapping, interpretation of existing glaciochronological...
Geology and geomorphology of the European Alps and the southern Alps of New Zealand: A comparison

The European Alps (Alps) and Southern Alps of New Zealand (Southern Alps) are both high mountain ranges formed by the collision of tectonic plates. The Alps resulted from collision of the African and European Plates, which produced complex lithological and structural patterns associated with the development of a series of overthrusted nappes. In contrast, the plate margin deformation that...

GLORIA: A global observation research initiative in alpine environments
The first internationally coordinated initiatives to observe the environment in Alpine regions date back to the 19th century. Around 1880, the first mountain observatories were established on European mountains. Today, the record of their activities provides a meteorological time series covering more than a century. Continuous meteorological measurements on high mountains in other continents...
The Karakoram anomaly? Glacier expansion and the ‘elevation effect,’ Karakoram Himalaya

In the late 1990s widespread evidence of glacier expansion was found in the central Karakoram, in contrast to a worldwide decline of mountain glaciers. The expansions were almost exclusively in glacier basins from the highest parts of the range and developed quickly after decades of decline. Exceptional numbers of glacier surges were also reported. Unfortunately, there has...

Climate and hydrology in mountain areas

The characteristics of climate and hydrology in mountain areas remain poorly understood relative to lowland areas. High spacial and temporal variability in precipitation, runoff and subsurface flow processes, and stream flow, as well as sparse instrumentation networks and limited historical records of climate and hydrology, contribute to limited understanding of the distribution and movement...

Measured and modelled sublimation on the tropical Glaciar Artesonraju, Peru
Sublimation plays a decisive role in the surface energy balance of tropical glaciers. During the dry season low specific humidity and high surface roughness favour the direct transition from ice to vapour and drastically reduce the energy available for melting. However, field measurements are scarce and little is known about the performance of sublimation parametrisations in glacier mass balance...
Reconstructing the glacier contribution to sea-level rise back to 1850
The authors present a method to estimate the glacier contribution to sea-level rise from glacier length records. These records form the only direct evidence of glacier changes prior to 1946, when the first continuous mass-balance observations began. A globally representative length signal is calculated from 197 length records from all continents by normalisation and...
On the limit to resolution and information on basal properties obtainable from surface data on ice streams
An optimal estimation method for simultaneously determining both basal slipperiness and basal topography from variations in surface flow velocity and topography along a flow line on ice streams and ice sheets is presented. The authors use Bayesian inference to update prior statistical estimates for basal topography and slipperiness using surface measurements along a...

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