Temperature sensitivity of mountain glaciers

Distributed summer air temperatures across mountain glaciers in the south-east Tibetan Plateau: temperature sensitivity and comparison with existing glacier datasets

Thomas E. Shaw¹, Wei Yang^2,3, Álvaro Ayala⁴, Claudio Bravo⁵, Chuanxi Zhao², Francesca Pellicciotti^1,6

¹ Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Birmensdorf, Switzerland

² Key Laboratory of Tibetan Environment Changes and Land Surface Processes, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing, China

³ CAS Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Beijing 100101, China

⁴ Centre for Advanced Studies in Arid Zones (CEAZA), La Serena, Chile

⁵ School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

⁶ Department of Geography, Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK

Corresponding author: Thomas E. Shaw (thomas.shaw@wsl.ch)

Keywords: Air Temperature, Glaciers, Tibetan Plateau, Temperature Sensitivity

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Dataset provided:

'Climatic_Sensitivity_Mountain_Glaciers.mat' = Matlab file with data structures for each glacier site. The following sites are:

% Parameter set calculated from data on Parlung Glaciers (this study)
% Parameter set from Shea and Moore (2010) for Rockies- Canada (Published parameters)
% Parameter set from Carturan et al. (2015) for Ortles Cevedale, Italy (k1/k2 data from author)
% Parameter set from Shaw et al. (2017) on Tsanteleina Glacier, Italy (Reassesed parameters)
% Parameter set calculated from data of Bravo et al., (2019) on South Patagonian Icefield (SPI), Chile
% Parameter set calculated from data of Bravo et al., (2017) on Universidad Glacier, Chile
% Parameter set calculated from data of Ayala et al., (2015) on Arolla Glacier, Switzerland
% Parameter set calculated from data of Ayala et al., (2015) on JuncalNorte Glacier, Chile
% Parameter set calculated from data of Troxler et al., (2020) on McCall Glacier, Alaska
% Parameter set calculated from data of Greuell and Böhm (1998) on Pasterze Glacier, Austria
% Parameter set calculated from data of Rets et al., (2019) on Djankuat Glacier, Russia
% Parameter set calculated from data of Pradhananga et al., (2020 In prep) on Peyto Glacier, Canada

Variables include:

'Name' = name of individual observation station (AWS or Temp/RH 'T-logger')
'Elevation' = Elevation (m a.s.l.) of given observation station
'Flowline' = The distance along the glacier flowline from an upslope summit or crest (m)
'k1' = The climatic sensitivity (ratio) of on-glacier temperatures to changes in the ambient (off-glacier) air temperature below the onset of katabatic onset (following Shea and Moore, 2010)
'k2' = The climatic sensitivity (ratio) of on-glacier temperatures to changes in the ambient (off-glacier) air temperature above the onset of katabatic onset (following Shea and Moore, 2010)
'Tst' = The T* parameter that defines the threshold (off-glacier) temperature for katabatic conditions parameterised following Carturan et al. (2015)
'T1' = The equivalent on-glacier threshold temeprature derived from k1 and Tst
'DataSource' = The citation readout

Cited literature
Ayala, A., Pellicciotti, F., & Shea, J. (2015). Modeling 2m air temperatures over mountain glaciers: Exploring the influence of katabatic cooling and external warming. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 120, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1002/2015JD023137.

Bravo, C., Quincey, D. J., Ross, A. N., Rivera, A., Brock, B. W., Miles, E., & Silva, A. (2019). Air Temperature Characteristics , Distribution , and Impact on Modeled Ablation for the South Patagonia Ice field. Journal of Geophysical Research : Atmospheres, 124, 907–925. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018JD028857

Bravo, C., Lorlaux, T., Rivera, A., & Brock, B. W. (2017). Assessing glacier melt contribution to streamflow at Universidad Glacier, central Andes of Chile. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 21, 3249–3266. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-3249-2017

Carturan, L., Cazorzi, F., De Blasi, F., & Dalla Fontana, G. (2015). Air temperature variability over three glaciers in the Ortles–Cevedale (Italian Alps): effects of glacier fragmentation, comparison of calculation methods, and impacts on mass balance modeling. The Cryosphere, 9(3), 1129–1146. https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-9-1129-2015

Greuell, W., & Böhm, R. (1998). 2 m temperatures along melting mid-latitude glaciers , and implications for the sensitivity of the mass balance to variations in temperature. Journal of Glaciology, 44(146), 9–20.

Rets, E. P., Popovnin, V. V, Toropov, P. A., Smirnov, A. M., Tokarev, I. V, Chizhova, J. N., … Kireeva, M. B. (2019). Djankuat glacier station in the North Caucasus , Russia : a database of glaciological , hydrological , and meteorological observations and stable isotope sampling results during 2007 – 2017. Earth System Science Data, ||, 1463–1481. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-11-1463-2019

Shaw, T. E., Brock, B. W., Ayala, A., Rutter, N., & Pellicciotti, F. (2017). Centreline and cross-glacier air temperature variability on an Alpine glacier: assessing temperature distribution methods and their influence on melt model calculations. Journal of Glaciology, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2017.65

Shea, J. M., & Moore, R. D. (2010). Prediction of spatially distributed regional-scale fields of air temperature and vapor pressure over mountain glaciers. Journal of Geophysical Research, 115(D23), D23107. https://doi.org/10.1029/2010JD014351

Troxler, P., Ayala, Á., Shaw, T. E., Nolan, M., Brock, B. W., & Pellicciotti, F. (2020). Modelling spatial patterns of near-surface air temperature over a decade of melt seasons on McCall Glacier , Alaska. Journal of Glaciology, 1–15. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2020.12