Abstract
AbstractGlaciers in the European Alps rapidly lose mass to adapt to changes in climate conditions. Here, we investigate the relationship and lag between climate forcing and geometric glacier response with a regional glacier evolution model accounting for ice dynamics. The volume loss occurring as a result of the glacier‐climate imbalance increased over the early 21st century, from about 35% in 2001 to 44% in 2010. This committed loss reduced to ~40% by 2018, indicating that temperature increase was outweighing glacier retreat in the early 2000s but that the fast retreat effectively somewhat diminished glacier imbalances. We analyze the lag in glacier response for each individual glacier and find mean response times of 50 ± 28 years. Our findings indicate that the response time is primarily controlled by glacier slope and secondarily by elevation range and mass balance gradient, rather than by glacier size.
Highlights
Glaciers have globally been losing mass at an accelerated pace over the past few decades (Wouters et al, 2019; Zemp et al, 2019)
By using a state‐of‐the‐art computer model that can simulate the evolution of many glaciers, we show that the imbalance between glaciers in the European Alps and climatic conditions grew during the early 21st century
Through numerical simulations of glacier evolution, we showed that glaciers in the European Alps are to lose a substantial part of their mass under present‐day climatic conditions
Summary
Glaciers have globally been losing mass at an accelerated pace over the past few decades (Wouters et al, 2019; Zemp et al, 2019). The glacier response time of Alpine glaciers has typically been studied for single or a few glaciers (e.g., Le Meur & Vincent, 2003; Oerlemans, 2007, 2012; Zekollari & Huybrechts, 2015) or through simplified approaches in which ice dynamics were not explicitly included (e.g., Haeberli & Hoelzle, 1995; Raper & Braithwaite, 2009). We complement these efforts by deriving the first regional‐scale glacier response time inventory with a physically based model and determine the main factors that control the response time of individual glaciers
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