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Variability of air temperature over a debris-covered glacier in the Nepalese Himalaya

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2016

Jakob F. Steiner  and
Francesca Pellicciotti
Jakob F. Steiner*
Affiliation:
Institute for Environmental Engineering, Institute of Technology (ETH), Zürich, Switzerland
Francesca Pellicciotti
Affiliation:
Institute for Environmental Engineering, Institute of Technology (ETH), Zürich, Switzerland Department of Geography, University of Northumbria, Newcastle, UK
*
Correspondence: Jakob F. Steiner <stjakob@ethz.ch>
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Abstract

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Estimates of melt from debris-covered glaciers require distributed estimates of meteorological variables and air temperature in particular. Meteorological data are scarce for this environment, and spatial variability of temperature over debris is poorly understood. Based on multiple measurements of air and surface temperature from three ablation seasons (2012–14) we investigate the variability of temperature over Lirung Glacier, Nepal, in order to reveal how air temperature is affected by the debris cover and improve ways to extrapolate it. We investigate how much on-glacier temperature deviates from that predicted from a valley lapse rate (LR), analyse on-glacier LRs and test regression models of air temperature and surface temperature. Air temperature over the debris-covered glacier tongue is much higher than what a valley LR would prescribe, so an extrapolation from off-glacier stations is not applicable. An on-glacier LR is clearly defined at night, with strong correlation, but not during the day, when the warming debris disrupts the elevation control. An alternative to derive daytime air temperature is to use a relationship between air and surface temperature, as previously suggested. We find strong variability during daytime that should be accounted for if these regressions are used for temperature extrapolation.

Keywords

debris-covered glaciersenergy balanceglacier meteorologymountain glaciers
Type
Paper
Information
Annals of Glaciology , Volume 57 , Issue 71 , March 2016 , pp. 295 - 307
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2016

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