In this paper we document changes of Langfjordjøkelen, a small ice cap in northern Norway. Surface mass-balance measurements have been carried out on an east-facing part (3.2 km 2 ) of the ice cap since 1989. Measurements reveal a strong thinning; the balance year 2008/09 was the 13th successive year with significant negative annual balance ( -0.30 m w.e.). The average annual deficit was 0.9 m w.e. over 1989-2009. The recent thinning of Langfjordjøkelen is stronger than observed for any other glacier in mainland Norway. Maps from 1966, 1994 and 2008 show that the whole ice cap is shrinking. The total volume loss over 1966-2008 was 0.264 km 3 . The east-facing part has been greatly reduced in volume (46%), area (38%) and length (20%). For this part over 1994-2008, the cumulative direct mass balance (-14.5 m w.e.) is less negative than the geodetic mass balance (-17.7 m w.e.). A surface mass-balance model using upper-air meteorological data was used to reconstruct annual balances back to 1948 and to reconstruct unmeasured years 1994 and 1995. Sensitivity of annual balance to 18 8C warming is -0.76 m w.e. and to 10% increase in precipitation is +0.20 m w.e.
Matthias Huss is an outstanding young glaciologist who completed his Ph.D. in 2009 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland, and currently has a joint appointment there and at the University of Fribourg. During his short scientific career, Matthias has made substantial and innovative contributions to a broad range of topics in glaciology, including modeling and projection of glacier mass and runoff changes, glacier outburst floods, glacier dynamics, and climate‐glacier interactions. His work ranges from local‐scale to regional‐ and global‐scale studies. Of note, he developed a new cutting‐edge and already widely used parameterization to model glacier retreat, which fills the gap between complex ice flow models and simple scaling methods. He also computed ice thickness distribution maps of all 200,000 glaciers in the world based on principles of flow dynamics. This unique data set has many applications, of which perhaps the most significant is the estimation of the total volume of stored ice, a quantity that is critical for projections of sea level rise and water resources during the 21st century.
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