An 11-year record of wintertime snow-surface energy balance and sublimation at 4863 m a.s.l. on the Chhota Shigri Glacier moraine (western Himalaya, India)

Mandal, Arindan; Angchuk, Thupstan; Azam, Mohd Farooq; Ramanathan, Alagappan; Wagnon, Patrick; Soheb, Mohd; Singh, Chetan

doi:10.5194/tc-16-3775-2022

Cited by 13 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 94 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Consequently, the saturation vapour pressure at the surface is lower, reducing the near-surface vapour pressure gradient and, hence, the sublimation rate. These findings are supported by findings of Mandal et al (2022). Their meteorological data and model simulation also reveal that sublimation rates are reduced during cold surface conditions.…”

Section: Future Research and Recommendationssupporting

confidence: 76%

“…In Chapter 3, I showed that sublimation is an important component of the high-altitude water balance. This is supported by findings of Mandal et al (2022). They showed that 16-42% of the seasonal snowfall is returned to the atmosphere due to sublimation using the bulkaerodynamic method driven by in situ meteorological data at a point location (4863 m a.s.l.)…”

Section: Future Research and Recommendationssupporting

confidence: 65%

“…Only a small number of studies have investigated the surface energy balance based on in situ meteorological observations and modelling of the surface energy balance in the Himalaya (Datt et al, 2008;Azam et al, 2014;Matthews et al, 2020;Mandal et al, 2022;Soheb et al, 2018). These modelling studies show that net shortwave radiation is the main source of energy.…”

Section: Snow Modellingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These modelling studies show that net shortwave radiation is the main source of energy. Sublimation can be significant (16-42% of the total winter snowfall) and effectively reduces the energy available for warming of the snowpack or melting (Mandal et al, 2022). There is an ongoing discussion about whether considerable melt occurs at very high altitude above an elevation of 8020 m a.s.l.…”

Section: Snow Modellingmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Snow dynamics in the Himalaya

Stigter¹

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The word Himalaya stems from Sanskrit, and literally translates as the abode of snow. This is illustrative of the importance of snow in this mountain range. The Himalaya is the highest mountain range on earth. Large areas are seasonally or even permanently covered in snow. The Himalaya is often referred to as the water tower of Asia, mostly because large amounts of fresh water are stored in snow and glacier ice. These frozen water towers act as a seasonal storage of water and provide a reliable and steady supply of meltwater to millions of people who live downstream in particular during droughts. In the last decade, glacier research in the Himalaya has really taken off and a plethora of studies has been published quantifying mass balances and glacier hydrological processes using direct observations, remote sensing or modelling. However, Himalaya snow research did not evolve as quickly and was mainly constrained to remote sensing studies focusing on snow cover trends. Since the snow covered area in the Himalaya is considerably larger than the glacier area, it is safe to assume that snowmelt plays a key role in the Himalayan water cycle, possibly, even more important than glacier melt. There is therefore a very large knowledge gap in data driven snow studies in the region that focus on critical processes in the energy and mass balance of the snowpack in the Himalaya. In this thesis, I contribute to closing this knowledge gap by using a combination of unique snow observations high in the Himalaya, remote sensing and modelling to study a number of those key processes. In particular, I focus on quantifying the snow water equivalent, the cold content, sublimation and refreezing of meltwater in the snowpack. This thesis shows the critical role that sublimation, refreezing of snow meltwater and snowpack cold content dynamics play in the energy and mass balance of the snowpack at high altitude. Future snow and hydrological studies should include these essential processes. So far, the vast majority of models applied in the region use the air temperature as a proxy for melt. However, in my thesis I showed that the reality is much more complex and that using the air temperature does not capture those processes which control the energy and mass balance of the snowpack. Future hydrological model studies in the Himalaya should attempt to simulate the full energy balance and mass balance, despite the fact that a lot of data is required. By setting up a number of well instrumented snow observatories, combined with smart downscaling of reanalysis data and high-resolution remote sensing, most of these data challenges can be overcome. Admittedly it is a large investment, but it is the only way forward to improve the hydrological forecasts and projections in this complex environment.

show abstract

Section: Future Research and Recommendationssupporting

confidence: 76%

Section: Future Research and Recommendationssupporting

confidence: 65%

Section: Snow Modellingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Snow Modellingmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Snow dynamics in the Himalaya

Stigter¹

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It is important to acknowledge that for higher-altitude glaciers in tropical regions, sublimation is a critical means of ablation 5,[48][49][50] , and this should not be expected to scale with 𝑇𝑒 in the same way that moist enthalpy exchange does. Instead, sublimation results from the flux of latent heat, and so is dependent on the gradient in specific humidity (SI Section 1).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling the impact of atmospheric heat accumulation on glacier mass balance

Matthews

Perry

Guy

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Air temperature (Ta) is ubiquitous in empirical modelling of future glacier extent. However, we argue that this long-held convention should be overturned in favour of the equivalent temperature Te, because the latter is proportional to the total (sensible plus latent) atmospheric heat exchange with a moist surface. From polar to tropical regions we show that variations in the glacier surface energy balance are better captured using Te, with the largest improvement in the critical tropical water tower regions. Similarly, we find that Te can discriminate more skilfully between rain and snow at 90 % of 5509 locations assessed. We also find that on-glacier Te is easier to infer from spatially coarse climate data. For these reasons we conclude that there are very strong, theoretical, empirical, and practical motivations for a paradigm shift in replacing Ta with Te to simulate the impacts of rising atmospheric heat content on glacier mass balance.

show abstract