An evaluation of mass-balance methods applied to Castle creek Glacier, British Columbia, Canada

Beedle, M. J.; Menounos, Brian; Wheate, Roger

doi:10.3189/2014jog13j091

Cited by 35 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…A 0.35 w.e. m uncertainty, suggested by Zemp et al (2013) and consistent with Beedle et al (2014) is assumed for the in situ glacier survey surface mass balance data.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 63%

Global sea-level contribution from Arctic land ice: 1971–2017

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Colgan

Wouters

et al. 2018

Environ. Res. Lett.

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The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP 2017) report identifies the Arctic as the largest regional source of land ice to global sea-level rise in the 2003-2014 period. Yet, this contextualization ignores the longer perspective from in situ records of glacier mass balance. Here, using 17 (>55°N latitude) glacier and ice cap mass balance series in the 1971-2017 period, we develop a semi-empirical estimate of annual sea-level contribution from seven Arctic regions by scaling the in situ records to GRACE averages. We contend that our estimate represents the most accurate Arctic land ice mass balance assessment so far available before the 1992 start of satellite altimetry. We estimate the 1971-2017 eustatic sea-level contribution from land ice north of ∼55°N to be 23.0±12.3 mm sea-level equivalent (SLE). In all regions, the cumulative sea-level rise curves exhibit an acceleration, starting especially after 1988. Greenland is the source of 46% of the Arctic sea-level rise contribution (10.6±7.3 mm), followed by Alaska (5.7±2.2 mm), Arctic Canada (3.2±0.7 mm) and the Russian High Arctic (1.5±0.4 mm). Our annual results exhibit co-variability over a 43 year overlap (1971-2013) with the alternative dataset of Marzeion et al (2015 Cryosphere 9 2399-404) (M15). However, we find a 1.36× lower sea-level contribution, in agreement with satellite gravimetry. The IPCC Fifth Assessment report identified constraining the pre-satellite era sea-level budget as a topic of low scientific understanding that we address and specify sea-level contributions coinciding with IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) 'present day' (2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015) and 'recent past' (1986)(1987)(1988)(1989)(1990)(1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005) reference periods. We assess an Arctic land ice loss of 8.3 mm SLE during the recent past and 12.4 mm SLE during the present day. The seven regional sea-level rise contribution time series of this study are available from AMAP.no.

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“…A 0.35 w.e. m uncertainty, suggested by Zemp et al (2013) and consistent with Beedle et al (2014) is assumed for the in situ glacier survey surface mass balance data.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 63%

Global sea-level contribution from Arctic land ice: 1971–2017

Box

Colgan

Wouters

et al. 2018

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…We are not aware of another study that has conducted such an analysis or determined this threshold for drifting icebergs or ice islands. The DDT values derived from the two aerial photography with SfM processing survey scenarios in our study (0.4 and 2.5 m) envelope those reported in past studies that used this technique to assess changes in the vertical dimension of their cryospheric research subjects [28,30,31]. Robe and Farmer [33] estimate a 10.5% error in their mass calculation method by propagating the errors associated with each step of their stereo-imagery processing workflow.…”

Section: Deterioration Detection and Mass Estimationmentioning

confidence: 79%

Surveying Drifting Icebergs and Ice Islands: Deterioration Detection and Mass Estimation with Aerial Photogrammetry and Laser Scanning

2018

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Icebergs and ice islands (large, tabular icebergs) are challenging targets to survey due to their size, mobility, remote locations, and potentially difficult environmental conditions. Here, we assess the precision and utility of aerial photography surveying with structure-from-motion multi-view stereo photogrammetry processing (SfM) and vessel-based terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) for iceberg deterioration detection and mass estimation. For both techniques, we determine the minimum amount of change required to reliably resolve iceberg deterioration, the deterioration detection threshold (DDT), using triplicate surveys of two iceberg survey targets. We also calculate their relative uncertainties for iceberg mass estimation. The quality of deployed Global Positioning System (GPS) units that were used for drift correction and scale assignment was a major determinant of point cloud precision. When dual-frequency GPS receivers were deployed, DDT values of 2.5 and 0.40 m were calculated for the TLS and SfM point clouds, respectively. In contrast, values of 6.6 and 3.4 m were calculated when tracking beacons with lower-quality GPS were used. The SfM dataset was also more precise when used for iceberg mass estimation, and we recommend further development of this technique for iceberg-related end-uses.

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“…; and contributes meltwater to Castle Creek, a tributary of the Fraser River. The glacier's annual mass balance has been monitored since 2009 (Beedle et al, 2014 (53 • 3 45 N, 120 • 26 4 W, 1803 m a.s.l. ), respectively.…”

Section: Study Site and Station Setupmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of different methods to model near-surface turbulent fluxes for a mountain glacier in the Cariboo Mountains, BC, Canada

et al. 2017

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Abstract. As part of surface energy balance models used to simulate glacier melting, choosing parameterizations to adequately estimate turbulent heat fluxes is extremely challenging. This study aims to evaluate a set of four aerodynamic bulk methods (labeled as C methods), commonly used to estimate turbulent heat fluxes for a sloped glacier surface, and two less commonly used bulk methods developed from katabatic flow models. The C methods differ in their parameterizations of the bulk exchange coefficient that relates the fluxes to the near-surface measurements of mean wind speed, air temperature, and humidity. The methods' performance in simulating 30 min sensible-and latent-heat fluxes is evaluated against the measured fluxes from an open-path eddycovariance (OPEC) method. The evaluation is performed at a point scale of a mountain glacier, using one-level meteorological and OPEC observations from multi-day periods in the 2010 and 2012 summer seasons. The analysis of the two independent seasons yielded the same key findings, which include the following: first, the bulk method, with or without the commonly used Monin-Obukhov (M-O) stability functions, overestimates the turbulent heat fluxes over the observational period, mainly due to a substantial overestimation of the friction velocity. This overestimation is most pronounced during the katabatic flow conditions, corroborating the previous findings that the M-O theory works poorly in the presence of a low wind speed maximum. Second, the method based on a katabatic flow model (labeled as the K Int method) outperforms any C method in simulating the friction velocity; however, the C methods outperform the K Int method in simulating the sensible-heat fluxes. Third, the best overall performance is given by a hybrid method, which combines the K Int approach with the C method; i.e., it parameterizes eddy viscosity differently than eddy diffusivity. An error analysis reveals that the uncertainties in the measured meteorological variables and the roughness lengths produce errors in the modeled fluxes that are smaller than the differences between the modeled and observed fluxes. This implies that further advances will require improvement to model theory rather than better measurements of input variables. Further data from different glaciers are needed to investigate any universality of these findings.

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An evaluation of mass-balance methods applied to Castle creek Glacier, British Columbia, Canada

Cited by 35 publications

References 65 publications

Global sea-level contribution from Arctic land ice: 1971–2017

Global sea-level contribution from Arctic land ice: 1971–2017

Surveying Drifting Icebergs and Ice Islands: Deterioration Detection and Mass Estimation with Aerial Photogrammetry and Laser Scanning

Evaluation of different methods to model near-surface turbulent fluxes for a mountain glacier in the Cariboo Mountains, BC, Canada

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