Recent Climatic Mass Balance of the Schiaparelli Glacier at the Monte Sarmiento Massif and Reconstruction of Little Ice Age Climate by Simulating Steady-State Glacier Conditions

Abstract

The Cordillera Darwin Icefield loses mass at a similar rate as the Northern and Southern Patagonian Icefields, showing contrasting individual glacier responses, particularly between the north-facing and south-facing glaciers, which are subject to changing climate conditions. Detailed investigations of climatic mass balance processes on recent glacier behavior are not available for glaciers of the Cordillera Darwin Icefield and surrounding icefields. We therefore applied the coupled snow and ice energy and mass balance model in Python (COSIPY) to assess recent surface energy and mass balance variability for the Schiaparelli Glacier at the Monte Sarmiento Massif. We further used COSIPY to simulate steady-state glacier conditions during the Little Ice Age using information of moraine systems and glacier areal extent. The model is driven by downscaled 6-hourly atmospheric data and high resolution precipitation fields, obtained by using an analytical orographic precipitation model. Precipitation and air temperature offsets to present-day climate were considered to reconstruct climatic conditions during the Little Ice Age. A glacier-wide mean annual climatic mass balance of −1.8 ± 0.36 m w.e. a − 1 was simulated between between April 2000 and March 2017. An air temperature decrease between −0.9 ∘ C and −1.7 ∘ C in combination with a precipitation offset of up to +60% to recent climate conditions is necessary to simulate steady-state conditions for Schiaparelli Glacier in 1870.

Energy and glacier mass balance of Fürkeleferner, Italy: past, present, and future

“…To investigate temperature and precipitation differences between 1855 and today, the glacier was set in equilibrium by varying the forcing data of temperature and precipitation until the simulations resulted in a zero mass balance. For this experiment, we use the glacier outline from 1855 and an estimate of the glacier surface following similar approaches as Huintjes et al (2016) and Weidemann et al (2020). All other model settings were left unchanged.…”

Gradientes Climáticos y su alta influencia en los ecosistemas terrestres de la Reserva de la Biosfera Cabo de Hornos, Chile

“…Las precipitaciones decrecen abruptamente una vez que las masas de aire cruzan hacia la vertiente oriente de la cordillera, donde el efecto Föhn refuerza condiciones más secas (Aguirre et al 2018;Weidemann et al 2013). En cordillera Darwin (Tierra del Fuego), los Andes cambian a una orientación oeste-este y se modifica este flujo generando un contraste de mayor precipitación en su vertiente suroccidental respecto a condiciones más secas en su vertiente nororiental (Weidemann et al 2020). Un estudio reciente basado en 17 años de registros meteorológicos en un transecto longitudinal (oeste-este), ha registrado un caso extremo de disminución de precipitaciones anuales desde 6.100 mm en Estación Paso Galería, en Gran Campo Nevado (52 º 45'S; 73 º 01'O) a 590 mm en Punta Arenas (53 º 08'S; 70 º 53'O); es decir, en un transecto oeste-este de solo 150 kilómetros la precipitación anual disminuye más de un orden de magnitud (Weidemann et al 2018).…”

Flow Regimes and Föhn Types Characterize the Local Climate of Southern Patagonia

“…The ERA5 dataset from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) is the highest resolution globally available reanalysis dataset existing, with an approximate spatial resolution of 31 km, 137 vertical levels and hourly output [36]. Recent studies have shown that it yields an overall improvement compared to other reanalysis datasets [37,38] and previous versions, which have been successfully applied in several studies in Patagonia (e.g., [10,31,[39][40][41]). Table 1.…”