Abstract

<strong class="journal-contentHeaderColor">Abstract.</strong> The Arctic is undergoing increased warming compared to the global mean, which has major implications for fresh-water runoff into the oceans from seasonal snow and glaciers. Here, we present high-resolution (2.5 km) simulations of glacier mass balance, runoff and snow conditions in Svalbard from 1991&ndash;2022, one of the fastest warming regions in the Arctic. The simulations are created using the CryoGrid community model forced by both CARRA reanalysis (1991&ndash;2021) and AROME-ARCTIC forecasts (2016&ndash;2022). Updates to the water percolation and runoff scheme are implemented in the CryoGrid model for the simulations. In-situ observations available for Svalbard are used to carefully evaluate the quality of the simulations and model forcing. The overlap period of 2016&ndash;2021, when both CARRA and AROME-ARCTIC data are available, is used to evaluate the consistency between the two forcing datasets. We find a slightly negative climatic mass balance (cmb) over the simulation period of &minus;0.08 m w.e. yr<sup>&minus;1</sup>, but with no statistically significant trend. The average runoff was found to be 41 Gt yr<sup>&minus;1</sup>, with an significant increasing trend of 6.3 Gt decade<sup>&minus;1</sup>. In addition, we find the simulated climatic mass balance and runoff using CARRA and AROME-ARCTIC forcing are similar, and differ by only 0.1 m w.e. in climatic mass balance and by 0.2 m w.e. in glacier runoff when averaged over all of Svalbard. There is, however, a clear difference over Nordenski&ouml;ldland, where AROME-ARCTIC simulates significantly higher mass balance and significantly lower runoff. This indicates that AROME-ARCTIC may provide high-quality predictions of the total mass balance of Svalbard, but regional uncertainties should be taken into consideration. The data produced from both the CARRA and AROME-ARCTIC forced CryoGrid simulations are made publicly available, and these high resolution simulation may be re-used in a wide range of applications including studies on glacial runoff, ocean currents, and ecosystems

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