Abstract
Abstract. The Cordilleras Huayhuash and Raura are remote glacierized ranges in the Andes Mountains of Peru. A robust assessment of modern glacier change is important for understanding how regional change affects Andean communities, and for placing paleo-glaciers in a context relative to modern glaciation and climate. Snowline altitudes (SLAs) derived from satellite imagery are used as a proxy for modern (1986–2005) local climate change in a key transition zone in the Andes. Clear sky, dry season Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) satellite images from 1986–2005 were used to identify snowline positions, and their altitude ranges were extracted from an Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) digital elevation model (DEM). Based on satellite records from 31 glaciers, average snowline altitudes (SLAs), an approximation for the equilibrium line altitude (ELA), for the Cordillera Huayhuash (13 glaciers) and Cordillera Raura (18 glaciers) from 1986–2005 were 5051 m a.s.l. from 1986–2005 and 5006 m a.s.l. from 1986–2002, respectively. During the same time period, the Cordillera Huayhuash SLA experienced no significant change while the Cordillera Raura SLA rose significantly from 4947 m a.s.l. to 5044 m a.s.l.
Highlights
The Cordilleras Huayhuash (10◦15 S, 76◦55 W) and Raura (10◦27 S, 76◦46 W) are tropical glacierized ranges located in a remote region of the Andes Mountains in central Peru (Fig. 1)
Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) and Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) data with 30-m resolution were used for snowline observations
We looked at annual snowline altitudes (SLAs) for individual glaciers as well as mean SLAs and the standard deviations for each range (Tables 3 and 4)
Summary
The Cordilleras Huayhuash (10◦15 S, 76◦55 W) and Raura (10◦27 S, 76◦46 W) are tropical glacierized ranges located in a remote region of the Andes Mountains in central Peru (Fig. 1). The Cordillera Huayhuash is southeast of the larger and better-known Cordillera Blanca, and has 117 glaciers covering ∼85 km (Morales Arnao, 2001). The Cordillera Raura, located to the southeast of the Cordillera Huayhuash, has a slightly smaller (55 km2) glacier area (Morales Arnao, 2001). The climate on the eastern side of the Andes is largely affected by orographic uplift and condensation of moist tropical air from the Amazon basin creating an east-west precipitation decrease (Kaser and Osmaston, 2002). Modern Tropical Rainfall Mapping Mission- (TRMM) derived precipitation highlighting the east to west gradients are shown effectively at a >5 km scale in Bookhagen and Strecker (2008)
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