HR: 0830h
AN: C11B-0814    [PDF]
TI: Measured Climate Induced Volume Changes of Three Glaciers and Current Glacier-Climate Response Prediction
AU: * Trabant, D C
EM: dtrabant@usgs.gov
AF: US Geological Survey, 3400 Shell St., Fairbanks, AK 99701-7245
AU: March, R S
EM: rsmarch@usgs.gov
AF: US Geological Survey, 3400 Shell St., Fairbanks, AK 99701-7245
AU: Cox, L H
EM: lcox@mines.utah.edu
AF: US Geological Survey, 3400 Shell St., Fairbanks, AK 99701-7245
AU: Josberger, E G
EM: ejosberg@usgs.gov
AF: US Geological Survey, 1201 Pacific Ave, Suite 600, Tacome, WA 98402
AB: Small but hydrologically significant shifts in climate have affected the rates of glacier volume change at the three U.S. Geological Survey Benchmark glaciers. Rate changes are detected as inflections in the cumulative conventional and reference-surface mass-balances of Wolverine and Gulkana Glaciers in Alaska and South Cascade Glacier in Washington. The cumulative mass balances are robust and have recently been corroborated by geodetic determinations of glacier volume change. Furthermore, the four-decade length of record is unique for the western hemisphere. Balance trends at South Cascade Glacier in Washington are generally in the opposite sense compared with Wolverine Glacier in Alaska; NCEP correlation of winter balance with local winter temperatures is positive at 0.59 for Wolverine and -0.64 for South Cascade Glacier. At Wolverine Glacier, the negative trend of cumulative mass balances, since measurements began in 1965, was replaced by a growth trend \(positive mass balances\) during the late 1970s and 1980s. The positive mass-balance trend was driven by increased precipitation during the 1976/77 to 1989 period. At Gulkana Glacier, the cumulative mass-balance trend has been negative throughout its measurement history, but with rate-change inflection points that coincide with the interdecadal climate-regime shifts in the North Pacific indices. At South Cascade Glacier, the mass-loss trend, observed since measurements began in 1953, was replaced by a positive trend between 1970 and 1976 then became strongly and continuously negative until 1997 when the rate of loss generally decreased. Since 1989, the trends of the glaciers in Alaska have also been strongly negative. These loss rates are the highest rates in the entire record. The strongly negative trends during the 1990s agree with climate studies that suggest that the period since the 1989 regime shift has been unusual. Volume response time and reference surface balance are the current suggested methods for analyzing the response of glaciers to climate. Volume response times are relatively simple to determine and can be used to evaluate the temporal, areal, and volumetric affects of a climate change. However, the quasi-decadal period between the recent climate-regime shifts is several times less than the theoretical volume readjustment response times for the benchmark glaciers. If hydrologically significant climate shifts recur at quasi-decadal intervals and if most glaciers' volume-response times are several times longer \(true for all but a few small, steep glaciers\), most medium and large glaciers are responding to the current climate and a fading series of regime shifts which, themselves, vary in magnitude. This confused history of driver trends prevent conventional balances from being simply correlated with climate. Reference-surface balances remove the dynamic response of glaciers from the balance trend by holding the surface area distribution constant. This effectively makes the reference surface balances directly correlated with the current climatic forcing. The challenging problem of predicting how a glacier will respond to real changes in climate may require a combination of the volume response time and reference surface mass balances applied to a long time-series of measured values that contain hydrologically significant variations.
DE: 1827 Glaciology (1863)
DE: 1833 Hydroclimatology
DE: 1836 Hydrologic budget (1655)
DE: 1854 Precipitation (3354)
DE: 1860 Runoff and streamflow
SC: Cryosphere [C]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting