Past, present, and future glacier evolution in the Tropical Andes

热带安第斯山脉过去、现在和未来的冰川演化

• 批准号: 528692799
• 负责人: Dr. Thorsten Seehaus
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Institut für Geographie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Independent Junior Research Groups
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/528692799?language=en
• 关键词: Past; present; future; glacier; evolution

Glaciers and ice caps outside the polar ice sheets are strongly affected by climate change, and various observables are defined as essential climate variables. Glacier shrinkage has local to regional-scale impacts on hydrology, ecosystems, and society. In the Tropical Andes, the glaciers pose an important water resource and significantly contribute to the local and regional water supply, especially during the dry season and drought periods. Moreover, glacier retreat increases the risk of glacier lake outburst floods putting downstream communities at risk. To improve future water management and risk assessment as well as to evaluate the impact of climate variations, region-wide and detailed information on the past, present, and future glacier evolution in the Tropical Andes is required. Current glacier mass change estimates have spatiotemporal limitations and often considerable uncertainties, while regional projections, carried out within global analyses, show partly ambiguous trends. This project aims to overcome these deficiencies by comprehensively analyzing the Tropical Andes' past, present, and future glacier evolution. An improved regional assessment of current and future glacier changes will be conducted based on an innovative combination of multi-mission remote sensing data, in-situ measurements, and glacier and hydrological modeling. In combination with data on past glacier changes, which are obtained by exploiting unique remote sensing archives, the evaluation of the long-term trend and its relation with climate change will be facilitated. By assimilating the new remote sensing products and in-situ observations into an ice-dynamic model inversion, highly improved ice volume distribution information will be generated. Projections of glacier evolution for the Tropical Andes until 2100 using mass balance modeling, optimized for the tropics, and fully 3-dimensional glacier modeling will be conducted to overcome the shortcomings of existing global estimates. Those activities will facilitate the subsequent study of the glacier lakes evolution and the glacier meltwater contribution to catchment runoff. The outcomes of this project will include novel and improved regional information regarding the glacier evolution in the Tropical Andes and methodological advances. These comprise (1) region-wide enhanced quantification of the ongoing glacier changes, the evaluation of its long-term trend and correlation with climatic variations, (2) development of innovative remote sensing and modeling techniques, (3) improved ice thickness information and projections of glacier and runoff evolution using fully coupled, 3D-distributed and optimized modeling.

极地冰盖以外的冰川和冰帽受气候变化的影响很大，各种可观测量被定义为基本气候变量。冰川萎缩对水文、生态系统和社会具有局部到区域尺度的影响。在热带安第斯山脉，冰川是一种重要的水资源，对当地和区域的供水作出了重大贡献，特别是在旱季和干旱期间。此外，冰川退缩增加了冰川湖溃决洪水的风险，使下游社区处于危险之中。为了改进今后的水资源管理和风险评估，以及评估气候变化的影响，需要关于热带安第斯山脉过去、现在和未来冰川演变的全区域详细信息。目前对冰川质量变化的估计存在时空局限性，而且往往存在相当大的不确定性，而在全球分析范围内进行的区域预测显示出部分模糊的趋势。 该项目旨在通过全面分析热带安第斯山脉的过去、现在和未来冰川演变来克服这些不足。将根据多任务遥感数据、现场测量以及冰川和水文建模的创新组合，对当前和未来冰川变化进行更好的区域评估。结合利用独特的遥感档案获得的以往冰川变化数据，将有助于评价长期趋势及其与气候变化的关系。通过将新的遥感产品和现场观测纳入冰动力模型反演，将产生高度改进的冰量分布信息。为了克服现有全球估计的缺点，将利用为热带地区优化的质量平衡模型和完全三维的冰川模型对热带安第斯山脉到2100年的冰川演变进行预测。这些活动将促进随后对冰川湖泊演变和冰川融水对集水径流的影响的研究。该项目的成果将包括关于热带安第斯山脉冰川演变的新的和改进的区域信息以及方法上的进展。这些措施包括：（1）在全区域范围内加强对冰川变化的量化，评估其长期趋势及其与气候变化的相关性，（2）开发创新的遥感和建模技术，（3）改进冰厚信息，并使用完全耦合的3D分布式优化建模对冰川和径流演变进行预测。