Snow Cover Dynamics and Mass Balance on Mountain Glaciers

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Glaciers contribute to sea level rise and to local and regional water supply. Moreover, they are highly evident indicators of climatechange. Mountain glaciers and their mass changes are particularly difficult to measure and to detect, mostly for inconvenient logistical circumstances. As a result, only from few glaciers we have annually reported bulk mass balance information from which researchers extrapolate to larger and unobserved regions with considerable uncertainties. This unsatisfying situation can be substantially improved when analyzing the mass and energy fluxes that drive glacier changes using (spatially) distributed modeling at high temporal resolution. The largest unknown to be overcome is the development of the snow cover from precipitation to wind induced redistribution and densification and, finally, its degradation. The seasonal duration of the snow cover depends on these processes and, through its high reflectivity against sunshine, dominates the wellbeing of a glacier. Theory and understanding of processes is well advanced and models are ready to be tested and used, yet respective measurements are missing. We will combine the expertise of our team members from the Universities of Innsbruck, Erlangen-Nuremberg and Saskatchewan with the logistically suitable, data rich, and well equipped Hintereisferner in the Ötztal Alps, Austria, for developing and calibrating the model tools that can push mass balance studies a large step forward in glaciology. We aim at reducing the uncertainties in estimating sea level rise and regional water supply and at obtaining a research tool that allows us to understand glacier-climate interactions in the full complexity of diverse mountain glacier settings all around the world.