A decade of glaciological and meteorological observations in the Arctic (Werenskioldbreen, Svalbard)

Abstract

Abstract. The warming of the Arctic climate is well documented, but the mechanisms of Arctic amplification are still not fully understood. Thus, monitoring of glaciological and meteorological variables and the environmental response to accelerated climate warming must be continued and developed in Svalbard. Long-term meteorological observations carried out in situ on glaciers in conjunction with glaciological monitoring are rare in the Arctic and significantly expand our knowledge about processes in the polar environment. This study presents the unique glaciological and meteorological data collected in 2009–2020 in southern Spitsbergen (Werenskioldbreen). The meteorological data are comprised of air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, shortwave and longwave upwelling and downwelling radiation on 10 minutes, hourly and daily timescale (2009–2020). The snow dataset includes 49 sampling points from 2009–2019 with the snow depth, snow bulk density and SWE data. The glaciological data consist of point and surface annual winter, summer and net balance for 2009–2020. The paper also includes modelling of the daily glacier surface ablation (2009–2020) based on the presented data. The high-quality and long-term datasets are expected to serve as accurate forcing data in hydrological and glaciological models and validation of remote sensing products. The datasets are available from the and Polish Polar Database (https://ppdb.us.edu.pl/) and Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5791748, Ignatiuk, 2021a; https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5792168, Ignatiuk, 2021b).

Polish Polar Research

“…The mass balance in 2011 was compared with data from (WGMS 2021) and Ignatiuk et al 2022). The mean winter balance in 2011 was clearly higher than in 1994 and 1999-2000.…”

“…This sensor utilizes a 50 kHz acoustic signal, applied with a temperature correction, and records the distance between the ground and the sensor level. A Schlumberger Baro-Diver sensor was installed for air pressure measurements, for more details about AWS2 see Ignatiuk et al (2022). Data from AWS1 were used to determine the spatial variability of air temperature on the glacier and to validate the models.…”

“…The spatial distribution of the stakes covered the altitude range from 117 m to 515 m a.s.l., thus ensuring good coverage of the spatial accumulation and ablation data. During the period analysed, the stakes were measured twice a year: in September-October, at the end of the ablation season, and in April-May, during the maximum winter accumulation (Ignatiuk et al 2022). All the data and detailed parameters of the meteorological and glaciological monitoring can be found in the Zenodo data repository (Ignatiuk 2021a(Ignatiuk , 2021bIgnatiuk et al 2022).…”

“…1). Its catchment area of 44 km 2 contains a valley-type glacier that covered an area of 27.1 km 2 in 2008 (Ignatiuk et al 2015) and 25.7 km 2 in 2017 (Ignatiuk et al 2022). The mean retreat rate between 1957 and 2019 was c. 25 m/year (Ciężkowski et al 2018).…”

“…Werenskioldbreen is well-studied, which, together with its forefield and river gorge, served as a well-defined research laboratory for glaciological (Baranowski 1982;Pälli et al 2003;Grabiec et al 2012;Ignatiuk et al 2015Ignatiuk et al , 2022, hydrological (Majchrowska et al 2015;Stachnik et al 2016aStachnik et al , 2016bStachnik et al , 2022Łepkowska and Stachnik 2018;Osuch et al 2022) and interdisciplinary studies (Gwizdała et al 2018;Sułowicz et al 2020).…”