Brief communication: Non-linear sensitivity of glacier mass balance to climate attested by temperature-index models

Temperature-index models have been widely used for glacier-mass projections spanning the 21st century. The ability of temperature-index models to capture non-linear responses of glacier surface mass balance (SMB) to high deviations in air temperature and solid precipitation was recently discussed in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe cryosphere Vol. 17; no. 5; pp. 1989 - 1995
Main Authors Vincent, Christian, Thibert, Emmanuel
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Katlenburg-Lindau Copernicus GmbH 12.05.2023
Copernicus
Copernicus Publications
Subjects
21st century
Ablation
Air temperature
Altitude
Climate change
Climate models
Climatic indexes
Communication
Experiments
Geography
Glacier mass balance
Glaciers
Humanities and Social Sciences
Ice
Machine learning
Mass
Mass balance
Mass balance of glaciers
Modelling
Nonlinear response
Numerical experiments
Precipitation
Temperature
Alps
Mont Blanc
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Summary:Temperature-index models have been widely used for glacier-mass projections spanning the 21st century. The ability of temperature-index models to capture non-linear responses of glacier surface mass balance (SMB) to high deviations in air temperature and solid precipitation was recently discussed in the context of mass-balance simulations employing advanced machine-learning techniques. Here, we performed numerical experiments with a classic temperature-index model and confirmed that such models are capable of detecting non-linear responses of glacier SMB to temperature and precipitation changes. Non-linearities derive from the change in the degree-day factor over the ablation season and from the lengthening of the ablation season.
ISSN:1994-0424
1994-0416
1994-0424
1994-0416
DOI:10.5194/tc-17-1989-2023