Application of Kriging Interpolation for Glacier Mass Balance Computations

Hock, Regine; Jensen, H. K.

doi:10.1111/1468-0459.00089

Cited by 31 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 12 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Various approaches are currently used to calculate glacierwide mass balance from point measurements, ranging from the profile and contour line method (Østrem and Stanley, 1969;Kaser and others, 2003) to the application of kriging (Hock and Jensen, 1999). The extrapolation of mass balance to the entire glacier surface always involves uncertainties, The location of point measurements of annual and winter balance for a selected year is shown by symbols.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

New long-term mass-balance series for the Swiss Alps

2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

ABSTRACT. In this study we present 19 new or re-analysed series of glacier-wide seasonal mass balance for the Swiss Alps based on direct measurements. The records partly start around 1920 and continue until today. Previously unpublished and unevaluated observations of point winter and annual balance are compiled from various sources and archives. These highly valuable datasets have not yet been consistently evaluated and were thus unavailable to the scientific community. Using distributed modelling for spatial interpolation and extrapolation and homogenization of the point measurements, we infer continuous series of area-averaged mass balance. The results are validated against independent decadal ice volume changes from photogrammetric surveys. Six of the new seasonal series cover 60 years and more and add a substantial amount of information on the variations of regional glacier mass change. This will strengthen the worldwide collection of glacier monitoring data, especially for the data-sparse period before the 1980s. We compare our results to existing long-term series and present an updated assessment of mass-balance variability and glacier sensitivity throughout the European Alps.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

New long-term mass-balance series for the Swiss Alps

2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Snow accumulation on glaciers often exhibits a persistent pattern from year-to-year (e.g. Hock and Jensen, 1999;Taurisano et al, 2007), and accumulation index maps have often been used to describe this pattern. Such an index map represents a mean spatial pattern of snow distribution and can be used as a distribution template The black contour lines illustrate the topography (at intervals of 50 m).…”

Section: Accumulation Index Mapmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distribution of snow accumulation on the Svartisen ice cap, Norway, assessed by a model of orographic precipitation

Schuler

Crochet

Hock

et al. 2008

Hydrological Processes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract:We apply a linear model of orographic precipitation (LT model) to estimate snow accumulation on the western Svartisen ice cap (220 km 2 ) in northern Norway. This model combines 3D airflow dynamics with simple parameterizations of cloud physics. The model is forced by large-scale atmospheric input variables taken from the ECMWF Re-analysis (ERA-40) of the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF), and the model parameters are kept constant for the entire simulation period, after optimization. The domain covers a 120 ð 125 km area surrounding the ice cap. The model is run using a 1-km resolution digital elevation model, and 6-h time steps over the period from 1958 to 2002. Precipitation data from surrounding meteorological stations and winter glacier mass balance measurements on several glaciers within the region are used to evaluate the model results. Precipitation obtained from the LT model agrees well with observations from precipitation gauges and there is also fair agreement between model results and specific winter mass balance observations on the ice cap if these are corrected for winter rain. The LT model reproduces well the spatial pattern of winter accumulation across the ice cap as well as the area-averaged winter mass balances of several other glaciers in the region. This indicates that it is a useful tool in providing high-resolution, deterministic estimates of precipitation in complex terrain as required for distributed hydrological and/or glacier mass balance modelling of unmeasured areas.

show abstract

“…Kriging -a method of interpolation for which the interpolated values are modelled by a Gaussian process -is often employed to create continuous surfaces from point data (e.g. Hock and Jensen, 1999;Bamber et al, 2001;Le Brocq et al, 2010;Bamber et al, 2013). The approach accounts for the statistical properties of observations within a local search neighbourhood using a variogram function (Deutsch and Journel, 1998).…”

Section: Krigingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Generating synthetic fjord bathymetry for coastal Greenland

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. Bed topography is a critical boundary for the numerical modelling of ice sheets and ice-ocean interactions. A persistent issue with existing topography products for the bed of the Greenland Ice Sheet and surrounding sea floor is the poor representation of coastal bathymetry, especially in regions of floating ice and near the grounding line. Sparse data coverage, and the resultant coarse resolution at the iceocean boundary, poses issues in our ability to model ice flow advance and retreat from the present position. In addition, as fjord bathymetry is known to exert strong control on ocean circulation and ice-ocean forcing, the lack of bed data leads to an inability to model these processes adequately. Since the release of the last complete Greenland bed topography-bathymetry product, new observational bathymetry data have become available. These data can be used to constrain bathymetry, but many fjords remain completely unsampled and therefore poorly resolved. Here, as part of the development of the next generation of Greenland bed topography products, we present a new method for constraining the bathymetry of fjord systems in regions where data coverage is sparse. For these cases, we generate synthetic fjord geometries using a method conditioned by surveys of terrestrial glacial valleys as well as existing sinuous feature interpolation schemes. Our approach enables the capture of the general bathymetry profile of a fjord in north-west Greenland close to Cape York, when compared to observational data. We validate our synthetic approach by demonstrating reduced overestimation of depths compared to past attempts to constrain fjord bathymetry. We also present an analysis of the spectral characteristics of fjord centrelines using recently acquired bathymetric observations, demonstrating how a stochastic model of fjord bathymetry could be parameterised and used to create different realisations.

show abstract

Application of Kriging Interpolation for Glacier Mass Balance Computations

Cited by 31 publications

References 12 publications

New long-term mass-balance series for the Swiss Alps

New long-term mass-balance series for the Swiss Alps

Distribution of snow accumulation on the Svartisen ice cap, Norway, assessed by a model of orographic precipitation

Generating synthetic fjord bathymetry for coastal Greenland

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About