Volume estimations of Chilean glaciers from global models – How do they compare to each other and to unreleased observations?
| Autor: | Arndt, J., Fernandez, A., Lillo, M., Rivera, D., Somos, M. |
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| Rok vydání: | 2023 |
| Zdroj: | XXVIII General Assembly of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) |
| DOI: | 10.57757/iugg23-0968 |
| Popis: | Knowledge of glacier volume is necessary to determine freshwater storage in glacierized regions. In particular, mountain glaciers provide important freshwater supply to communities and agriculture downstream, especially in scenarios of drought. Ice-thickness observations are needed to determine glacier volume, but measurements are usually rare, representing a key data gap to cryospheric research today. Numerical ice-flow models, as well as simpler glacier surface to volume relationships, are commonly used to estimate glacier volumes, despite the lack of observations. Chile has suffered a ‘mega drought’ in the last decade and such drier conditions are likely to persist in the future due to climate change. Hence, volume estimations for Chilean glaciers and knowledge on their accuracy are highly relevant.We investigate ice-volume estimates for Chilean glaciers on glacier and on watershed level obtained from different data sources, e.g. derived from global glacier models and from local inventories. The global models use glacier outlines of the Randolph Glacier Inventory and ice thickness observations from the Glacier Thickness Database. Unfortunately, we found that for Chile the first is not accurate and that, for the latter, observational ice-thickness data of more than 30 glaciers has not yet been made publically available. We compare the ice volumes derived from global models to volumes derived directly from the previously unavailable observational data. The comparison enables us to obtain a sense under which conditions current glacier models provide more accurate or rather poor ice-volume estimates, which may provide hints leading to an improved ice-volume estimation. The 28th IUGG General Assembly (IUGG2023) (Berlin 2023) |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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