Hoelzle, 2007. Application of glacier inventory data for estimating climate effects on mountain glaciers

Hoelzle, M. T. C., D. Stuumm, F. Paul, M. Zemp, W. Haeberli (2007). "The application of glacier inventory data for estimating past climate change effects on mountain glaciers: A comparison between the European Alps and the Southern Alps of New Zealand."Global and Planetary Change 56: 69-82

The WGMS collects data based on the Global Hierarchical Observing Strategy (GHOST) which consists of 5 tiers (GCOS/GTOS, 1997b, IUGG (CSS)/UNEP/UNESCO, 2005).

Ultimately the paper uses an older parameterization scheme to look at glacier changes but at the end says it’s not applicable to smaller glaciers and with predicted IPCC warming trends resulting in possibly drastic geometry changes in glaciers the technique used in the paper would no longer be applicable and thus suggests using modern remote sensing technologies. This paper serves as a reference for the usefulness and limitations of using existing glacier inventories to do this. – a good reference for when I’m writing.

Updates on glacier inventories should usually be every few decades but with the rate glaciers are receding updates may need to be on shorter intervals.

-Using Max altitude, min altitude, length, and total surface area they used the parameterization scheme used by Haeberli and Hoelzle (1995) to look at glacier change.

-It looks like I may be able to used some of the equations in the paper but I would need to know the “basal shear stress” and the glacier thickness. Perhaps these are in other studies taken from ground measurements in situ? This would be best applicable on the largest glaciers on Hood & Rainier.

-The paper found the reaction time of the Franz Joseph glacier to be around 7 years as estimated in the study while the response time (time taken to reach equilibrium after a “step” climate change) is around 20 years.

-They explain what “response time” means but not “reaction time”. What is the difference?

-They found the response time of the large glaciers in the Alps to be much longer than those in the NZ Alps.

-After completing the calculations based off Haeberli, Hoelzle found 61% of the original volume has been lost in NZ and around 48% in the Euro Alps.

-Many glaciers in NZ are debris covered (thermal insulation).

-The calculations in this study are based on 4 simple geometric parameters contained in detailed glacier inventories.. so this could be done by me for Hood and Rainier possibly if I can find the data and use the Landsat for the geometry perhaps…. But paper also notes uncertainties are considerable. – Paper notes that this is better suited for large glaciers than smaller ones so it might not be appropriate for Hood & Rainier after all.

-In contrast to the Alps, in NZ the glaciers have experienced a positive mass balance and some have advanced strongly in the 90’s, especially the “wet” glaciers of NZ. Today the glaciers are again retreating.

Papers of Interest:

Bishop, M.P., et al., 2004. Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS): remote sensing and GIS investigations of the Earth's cryosphere. Geocarto International 19 (2), 57–85.

Chinn, T.J., Heydenrych, C., Salinger,M.J., 2005a. Use of the ELA as a practical method of monitoring glacier response to climate in New Zealand's Southern Alps. Journal of Glaciology 51 (172), 85–95.

Frauenfelder, R., Zemp, M., Haeberli, W., Hoelzle, M., 2005. Worldwide glacier mass balance measurements. Trends and first results of an extraordinary year in Central Europe, Ice and Climate News, pp. 9–10

GCOS/GTOS, 1997a. GCOS/GTOS Plan for terrestrial climate related observations. WMO, vol. 796. World Meteorological Organization, Geneva.

GCOS/GTOS, 1997b. GHOST Global Hierarchical Observing Strategy. WMO, vol. 862. World Meteorological Organization, Geneva.

GCOS/GTOS, 2004. Implementation plan for the Global Observing System for Climate in support of the UNFCCC. WMO, vol. 1219. World Meteorological Organization, Geneva.

Haeberli, W., Burn, C.R., 2002. Natural hazards in forests: glacier and permafrost effects as related to climate change. In: Sidle, R.C. (Ed.), Environmental Change and Geomorphic Hazards in Forests. IUFRO Research Series. CABI Publishing, Wallingford/New York, pp. 167–202.

Haeberli, W., Hoelzle, M., 1995. Application of inventory data for estimating characteristics of and regional climate-change effects on mountain glaciers: a pilot study with the European Alps. Annals of Glaciology 21, 206–212.

Haeberli, W., Holzhauser, H., 2003. Alpine glacier mass changes during the past two millenia. PAGES News 11 (1), 13–15. Haeberli,W., Cihlar, J., Barry, R., 2000. Glacier Monitoring within the Global Climate Observing System— a contribution to the Fritz Müller Memorial. Annals of Glaciology 31, 241–246.

Haeberli, W., Maisch, M., Paul, F., 2002. Mountain glaciers in global climate-related observation networks. World Meteorological Organization Bulletin 51 (1), 1–8.

Hoelzle, M., Haeberli, W., Dischl, M., Peschke, W., 2003. Secular glacier mass balances derived from cumulative glacier length changes. Global and Planetary Change 36 (4), 295–306.

Kuhn, M., 1989. The response of the equilibrium line altitude to climatic fluctuations: theory and observations. In: Oerlemans, J. (Ed.), Glacier fluctuations and climatic change. Kluwer, Dodrecht, pp. 407–417.

Kääb, A., et al., 2005a. Remote sensing of glacier-and permafrost related hazards in high mountains: an overview. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences 5, 527–554.

Kääb, A., Reynolds, J.M., Haeberli,W., 2005b. Glacier and permafrost hazards in high mountains. In: Huber, M., Bugmann, H.K.M., Reasoner, M.A. (Eds.), Global Change and Mountain Regions (A state of Knowledge Overview). Advances in Global Change Research. Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 225–234.

Leysinger Vieli, G.J.-M.C., Gudmundsson, G.H., 2004. On estimating length fluctuations of glaciers caused by changes in climatic forcing. Journal of Geophysical Research 109, F01007.

Nye, J.F., 1960. The response of glaciers and ice-sheets to seasonal and climatic changes. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A 256, 559–584.

Paul, F., Kääb, A., Maisch, M., Kellenberger, T., Haeberli, W., 2004. Rapid disintegration of Alpine glaciers observed with satellite data. Geophysical Research Letters 31 (21), L21402.

Hood GIS Files?

Today:

Spent a while today downloading GLIMS glacier outlines for Hood and figuring out how to transfer the non-projected files I downloaded into GIS. With some help from an email to Bruce Raup I figured it out. According to the metadata all the outlines (which are in red in the kml google earth version to the right) were created by Andrew Fountain. What confuses me is that I think he created outlines for snowfields as well but the data either indicates “glacier outline” or “rock outline” in the meta data. He has labeled the metadata according to the major glacier names such as “elliot”. Should I stick with just the major glacier outlines or keep all the red polygons as you can see to the right. I also finally got things working with Arc Globe today so I was able to put the LiDAR DEM in as the elevation source with the hillshade on top of it. Below to the right is a quick image I made showing Fountain’s polygons for the “glaciers” with the blue representing the 1987 band ratio image with a threshold of .3 cropped to within those polygons.

This is just a start and I’m still working on cropping a few things and getting the projections perfect. I’m going to try to grab a recent NAIP from Watershed (hopefully they have one) of Hood that I’ll drape over top the hillshade to figure out which polygons of Fountain’s appear to be snow fields or glacier or if there is even anything there anymore.

Questions:

Do you know of any place for me to get any more glacier outlines for Hood rather than GLIMS which I’ve done? Should I email Andrew Fountain to see if he has any newer ones or different ones than the ones I have? Also, would it be possible for me to get ASTER or SPOT images for 1987, 1992, or 2005? It may help to clarify some things if I had a higher resolution imagery.

Mark, 2005. Evaluation of recent glacier recession in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru (AD 1962-1999)

Mark, B. G., Geoffrey O. Seltzer (2005). "Evaluation of recent glacier recession in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru (AD 1962-1999): spatial distribution of mass loss and climate forcing." Quaternary Science Reviews 24: 2265-2280.

Observed heat loss can be explained by sensible heat transfer related to a temperature rise combined with latent heat decrease related to a an increase in specific humidity. A transmissivity model within a DEM indicated that solar radiation related to altered cloudiness was not a predominant climate forcing.

-There are many interconnected surface energy-mass fluxes and changes in precip and humidity can affect mass balance through altering all-wave radiation that actually controls mass balance.

-I should look at humidity trends in the NW as well and possibly relate that to ablation rates. An increase in temperature raises the saturation vapor pressure, causing a rise in specific humidity under the controlling assumption of constant relative humidity. More humidity in the air would probably also induce increased cloudiness and a greater longwave radiative flux to the glaciers but the clouds would at the same time block incoming direct radiation.

-Aim of the paper is to show that glacier recession in the andes of Peru has been forced primarily by increased tropospheric temp with an associated decrease in humidity.

-Solar radiation, primary energy responsible for melt, depends on the “solar geometry” or the orientation of the glacier relative to the sun and surrounding topography.

-Warmer temps throughout a region may override the geometrically dependent solar influence and force more spatially symmetrical glacier recessionLook at how this is on Hood & Rainier and use Mark’s paper to cite.

- "Greenhouse forcing" involving increased temps and absolute humidity has replaced the spatially variable recession of the early 20th century on Kenyan Glaciers.

-Diurnal convection patterns cause a zonal asymmetry in the radiation balance in the region. Where glaciers are more sensitive to this individual glaciers with western aspects reach lower altitudes locally. – Thus the glaciers in 1962 seemed to be more sensitive to solar radiation than regional precipitation.

-They compared the difference in volume between glacier area of two different surfaces. I could do this if I derived DEM’s from ASTER for the years I pick but how accurate would that be when I then compare them to the LiDAR?

-The authors used a “TopoView” program to model the solar radiation based off surrounding topography.

-The paper looked at insolation values with respect to solar radiation and found that min for southern aspects and max for northern aspects (opposite of northern hemisphere).

-Found that glaciers remaining in steeper valley walls have retreated to more enclosed areas, while others that lack protective shading in upper regions are

becoming exposed to more intense annually averaged radiation over time. But the modeled distribution of averaged radiation receipt does not match the observed pattern of maximum ice loss. The insolation is negatively correlated to surface lowering.

-The paper uses Oerleman’s energy balance equation at the surface of the glacier. B= SW+LW+Qe+Qs.

-In this paper Mark assumes that any change that might effect the SW to the surface could force significant mass loss and should also cause a differential thinning based on the solar geometry of the glacier but in this study area the solar geometry does not account for the observed spatial pattern of melt. Will it apply on Hood or Rainier?

-Vertical gradients of temp and humidity determine the magnitude and sign of the energy fluxes such that sensible heat is typically positive and toward the glacier surface while latent is negative away from the surface.

-Without any direct mass balance measurements the AAR method is favored over other methods to estimate ELA from glacier dimensions.

-Temperature increases in the Andes far exceeds the global prediction.

-The asymmetrical pattern of ice mass loss can be explained by accounting for the different glacier hypsometries under a spatially homogenous temperature increase.

-Higher tropospheric temperatures would directly enhance the sensible heat flux to surfaces in all directions uniformly as a function of elevation but the ice volume lost would vary as a function of hypsometry.

-Not only would increased temps enhance mass loss via the sensible heat flux, but any associated specific humidity increase would increase ice loss as the reduced latent heat flux leaves energy available at the surface to create melting.

-Review the list of conclusions with this paper later if needed.

Papers of interest

Hastenrath, S., Kruss, P.D., 1992. The dramatic retreat of Mount Kenya’s glaciers between 1963 and1987: greenhouse forcing. Annals of Glaciology 16, 127–133.

Jones, P.D., Osborn, T.J., Briffa, K.R., 2001. The evolution of climate over the last millennium. Science 292 (5517), 662–667.

Kuhn, M., 1989. The response of the equilibrium line altitude to climate fluctuations: theory and observatio ns. In: Oerlemans, J. (Ed.), Glacier fluctuations and Climate Change. Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp. 407–417.

Lean, J., Rind, D., 1998. Climate forcing by changing solar radiation. Journal of Climate 11, 3069–3094.

Meier, M.F., Post, A.S., 1962. Recent variations in mass net budgets of glaciers in western North America. IAHS 58, 63–77.

Oerlemans, J., 1994. Quantifying global warming from the retreat of glaciers. Science 264 (5156), 243–245.

Oerlemans, J., Knap, W.H., 1998. A 1 year recordof global radiation and albed o in the ablation zone of Morteratschgletscher, Switzerland. Journal of Glaciology 44 (147), 231–238.

Peterson, T.C., Vose, R.S., 1997. An overview of the global historical climatology network temperature database. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 78 (12), 2837–2849.

Ramanathan, V., 1988. The greenhouse theory of climate change: a test by an inadvertent global experiment. Science 240 (4850), 293–299.

Yanalak, M., Baykal, O., 2003. Digital elevation model based volume calculations using topographical data. Journal of Surveying and Engineering 129 (2), 56–64.

Bolch, 2007. Climate Change & glacier retreat in northern Tien Shan (Kazakhstan/Kyrgyzstan) with remote sensing

Bolch, T. (2007). "Climate Change and glacier retreat in northern Tien Shan (Kazakhstan/Kyrgyzstan) using remote sensing data." Global and Planetary Change 56: 1-12.

This paper uses the TM4/TM5 ratio method but instead of LiDAR uses an ASTER-derived DEM. The temperature increase in Tien Shan from 1950 to 2000 was two times higher than the global average. An overall decrease in glacier extent of 32% from 1955 to 1999 based off prior Soviet Glacier Inventory. The retreat was dependent on size, location, climate regime of the glaciers. The big takeaway for me from this paper was that retreat of humid maritime glaciers was much greater than their continental counterparts. But, under dryer conditions with high solar radiation the retreat of continental-type glaciers can be even greater than the maritime (perhaps this can explain glacier NP).

-More humid glaciers in Tien Shan retreated faster than those in more continental areas. In my paper maybe compare the rate of decrease on Hood and Rainier to more continental glaciers northern rockies?

-In this area radiation accounts for 80-90% of ablation.

-Tobias analyzed the climate by using 16 time series of temp & precipitation from 16 weather stations at various altitudes.

-What does he mean by “important luv and lee effects of the precipitation”?

-He modeled the radiation using a “sunray” program?

-For this area he used at TM4/5 ratio image with a threshold of 2 to dilineate the glaciers and misclassified pixels of vegetated areas and lakes were eliminated using NDVI.

-Bolch didn’t really clearly explain why or how he chose this threshold. I’d like to be a little more clear as it is what he ultimately gets all of his ablation figures from and if it was arbitrarily chosen his figures could not be representative.

-He mentions the use of morphometric parameters and slope from other papers (Bishop 2001, Paul 2004) to delineate the debris covered glacier tongues. But he only says “problems arose” and didn’t explain how he accounted for these problems.

-The most sensitive geomorphometric parameter describing the surface of glaciers is the curvature so he calculated the vertical and tangential curvature using the DEM. He used the curvature in a cluster analysis with “SAGA” software to delineate the debris covered tongues clearly.

-It appears that Bolch sees the same non-continuous increase in temp that I’ve seen in other papers as well. He does note that urbanization in the area may skew the data towards warmer temps.

-Bolch compares temperatures by season and found that there is a greater increase in temp in autumn and winter. Perhaps I should do the same.

-Bolch found that three glaciers had advanced and the continental glaciers in one valley had a very small retreat.

Papers of interest

Bishop, M.P., Bonk, R., Kamp, U., Shroder, J.F., 2001. Terrain analysis and data modeling for Alpine glacier mapping. Polar Geography 25, 182–201.

Haeberli, W., Beniston, M., 1998. Climate change and its impacts on glaciers and permafrost in the Alps. Ambio 27 (4), 258–265.

IPCC (Ed.), 2001. Climate Change 2001 — The Scientific Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Oerlemans, J., 1994. Quantifying global warming from the retreat of glaciers. Science 264, 243–245.

Hood Hillshade in GIS & Least SWE Years Chosen

This week:

I just saw your comment from last week’s blog update and on Monday I will plot both the date the snow disappeared for all years as well as the max SWE for each year. Based on the plots I have done the years 1987, 1992, and 2005 appear to be the best years for the analysis. For all three of those years for both Hood and Rainier the SWE was lowest throughout and all had the min SWE for their respective decades and snow disappeared early for all three, around June 1st (but I’ll have that all plotted on Monday).

I was able to finally get the hill shade of Mt. Hood and the bare earth DEM as well. It took a while because it was in the Portland office and transferring it down to us took some time over the net.

I am going to try to look for DEM’s for these years both at work and on the web. Would it be possible for you to obtain ASTER images for Hood and Rainier for 2005? Is it possible to derive a DEM from any other satellite data for the earlier years like researchers have done with ASTER? Maybe with SPOT?

....... well I started this post early this afternoon and after struggling for a while today with the stupid computers in the lab downstairs I finally got a quick image to show you on the right. That is the hillshade with the 1987 glaciers on hood with a threshold of .3 that I used before for the graphics in Decemeber for Rainier. It’s a quick image as I’m about to leave for the day. Once I get the hillshade and bare earth cropped and arc globe to actually find an internet connection in the lab I’ll have much better eye candy for you on monday. For now I’m headed home with a box of tissues as both Em and I have caught some sort of nasty bug.

Also, on my paper review page I’ve posted a bunch of papers I’ve been reading.

Cheers

MLK Sunriver Weekend

Emily and I just got back from a very fun Martin

Luther King weekend getaway to Sunriver outside of Bend, Oregon. We had been invited to the OMC vacation rental for the weekend at only $55 per person for all three nights with meals included in the budget. How could we resist? Emily had been traveling all week to Atlanta, GA for work so when she got home on Friday she was pretty exhausted from traveling so we stayed home friday night so she could sleep in her own bed for a night.

We took off from Corvallis Saturday morning around 10:30am making it to the Tumalo Falls road at about 1:30pm. The access forest service road to the falls was gated off so instead of doing the loop hike I had planned we simply walked the 2.5 miles down the snow covered road to Tumalo Falls. It was obviously a popular place to go for people from Bend because we saw a lot of people and their dogs out for the walk. It was misty so we wore our rain coats. It didn’t take us long to reach the falls which were absolutely beautiful. We stayed for a little bit taking photos before heading back to Bend to get some booze and groceries for the cabin.

It was a very nice place that we had. When we arrived there were only a few people there with most of the others

climbing in

sunshine and t-shirt weather at Smith Rock for the afternoon. When everyone returned home we watched some ski movies and a few girls cooked up some amazing chili for dinner. At around 8pm someone organized a hash run throughout the resort community that Emily and I opted out of. Aaron had showed up just before the hash. Everyone dressed up in some pretty damn funny outfits for the hash. We also played a game called “missions” where everyone would write down crazy shit for others to do to keep the night exciting. I wrote “Kriss Kross” yourself out which resulted in Denise wearing her pants backwards. I think Hartz wrote “poop in the street” which thankfully nobody did! For the rest of the night Emily and played asshole with Keith and his girlfriend who we met for the first time. Late at night I put in the movie “Superbad” which was at first hard to hear over all the commotion and noise but soon everyone had pulled up a chair to watch it. Ben Sigler and Bryan Carrington had stopped by to let us know they had picked up two snowmobiles for the next day and that they would pick us up at 8am.

8am came around quick and I was definitely hung over from boxed wine, beer and an hour in the hot tub. Thankfully Ben and Bryan were no where to be found which left Emily, Hartz and I on our own for the day to climb Tumalo ourselves. Hartz picked up

his friend Kelly and we all spent the early afternoon climbing and skiing Tumalo... in about 5 inches of fresh powder.... yup... even though it was pouring all night at Sunriver and looked terrible we were pleasantly surprised on the way up Cascade Lakes Highway to see it all turn to snow! It only took us about an hour and a half to get to the top of Tumalo and the bowl was way to cloudy with no visibility to ski so we decided to just ski back down through the trees. Kelly was super nice and I think she may join me on my planned ascent of the Grand Teton later this summer. At the top of Tumalo Hartz had a tin of sardines as usual and invited me to try one... I finally did... and loved it! All my times of making fun of Hartz for his sardines are over with as I will now carry a tin myself to the top. The descent down the mountain in my BD Voodoo

skis was amazing and I planned on trying out my fat Megawatts the next day. Back at the parking lot we found Ben and Bryan with the snowmobiles and they said it didn’t work out as the snow was too heavy and wet causing the sleds to get stuck if they took them off the established tracks. That info definitely made us feel better about our choice of trekking up Tumalo on our own because we ended up with better skiing in powder and didn’t have to split the cost of the sleds.

That night the OMC crew cooked up some vegetarian fajita’s which I wasn’t really fond of so we all went over to Kelly’s house to hang out with them for a bit. (BTW, there were over 20+ OSU houses in Sunriver this past weekend of various groups and departments). We played Apples To Apples with them for a while and I was told to help myself to the lamb skewers they had made for dinner which were delicious. There were dogs everywhere in the house, the cutest being a 2 month old golden named Bodie. I played with the dogs so much they thought I was the “dog whisperer”! Ha! After chilling in the hot tub for a little while with Kelly we returned back to the OMC house to find mayhem going on. They were all playing a dual-deck game of asshole and everyone was drunk.

This is when Hartz, Emily and I realized we were old farts as we found ourselves retiring to a side bedroom with a tv to watch a discovery channel show on the ring of fire in the pacific and read. The two of them fell asleep quickly on the bed next to me but eventually I ushered Hartz

to the foot of the bed where he proceeded, as usual for Hartz, to snore most of the night. This was lucky for him as Forrest and some others were conducting some sort of Chuck Norris high kicking contest in the main room which sounded like the house was coming

down. I had set up a party dance mix for everyone before I went to bed but the whole jump kicking was getting a little annoying at 3am... Emily and I needless to say didn’t get much sleep.

On Sunday we again returned to Tumalo mountain to ski it under much clearer conditions. I had video taped Hartz with my new helmet cam on Sunday but today the weather looked a lot better so I was hoping for better film quality. I convinced Hartz to film me on the way down with the cam on his goggles. Today we were accompanied by Jen with her snowboard and Sarah on snowshoes (Kelly’s friends). I adjusted the bindings for my Megawatts and put the Voodoo-width skins on the bottom of them

which just looked like a thin strip of fur down the center of the fatty skis. Unfortunately this meant that the skins were pretty terrible at keeping traction on the way up and I found myself exhausted and lagging behind the others. When it got icy on traverses near the top I ended up taking my skis completely off and carrying them to the summit. Forrest caught up with us near the top and helped Hartz assess the avy

conditions. They decided that it might be safe but a big block was able to be knocked off so it wasn’t a good idea to do it without beacons (good idea as a major avalanche tore down Hood farther north on the same day). It was windier and colder on top so we didn’t stay long. The descent on my fat skis was sooo much fun and Hartz got some great (yet bouncy with the goggle mount) footage of me on the way down. At one point in some thick trees Emily ran into Hartz and got tangled in a hilarious mess. Sarah on her snowshoes actually made it back to the parking lot before us. Once down at the parking lot we all had a beer and chilled out before taking off to return to Corvallis. It was a fun weekend and it was great to finally get some runs on powder in this very crappy winter thus far.