From global change to regional response: Integrating global and regional climate model simulations with alpine glacier mass balance and downstream hydrology

未来气候变化对世界冰川地区（高海拔和高纬度地区）的影响对淡水的供应具有重要影响。在夏季融化季节，高度依赖持续和强劲的冰川/雪融水的部门包括农业，水力发电和公共淡水供应。其他与地球冰川相关的因素包括全球海平面、跨境河流的地缘政治以及冰川湖爆发洪水（GLOFs）的危险。在世界上的某些地区（例如，喜马拉雅山脉跨越的国家），冰川融水是淡水的主要来源，但在喜马拉雅山脉、阿尔卑斯山和安第斯山脉，冰川融水一直在增加，造成数千人死亡，并对定居点、基础设施和牲畜造成数百万美元的损失。 我计划把下面概述的研究重点放在地球仪的两个敏感地区：加拿大西部（不列颠哥伦比亚省和阿尔伯塔）和喜马拉雅山（巴基斯坦、印度和尼泊尔）。全球气候、区域气候、高山冰川和水文之间的物理联系和相互作用尚未得到探索。气候系统的每个方面都有数值模型，但考虑到每个组成部分在不同的空间和时间尺度上运作，以能够预测的可靠方式将它们联系在一起是一个重大的数值挑战。我在阿尔伯塔大学的研究小组重点研究了下一个世纪“一切照旧”排放情景下加拿大西部科迪勒拉山脉和喜马拉雅山脉的气候变化，我们已经整合了全球和区域气候模型来解决这些问题。我们现在专注于高端排放情景，使用普林斯顿地球物理流体动力学实验室最新的大气-海洋GCM（ESM 2 M）。天气研究和预报模式（WRF）一直是我们缩小GCM数据的工具。我们在WRF内开发了一个冰川质量平衡模型，该模型与大气模型相互作用，也可以代表喜马拉雅地区非常普遍的碎片覆盖的冰川。这一系列数值工作的下一步是将冰川物质平衡的预测与水文和下坡径流联系起来，特别注意详细的地形、冰川湖形成的可能性和淡水供应。许多分布式水文模型可以利用WRF模拟的结果来预测未来的气候。我们已经开始使用SWAT水文模型，并将其配置为在阿尔伯塔和尼泊尔使用。**拟议的研究整合了大气，海洋，冰冻圈和水文建模领域，同时保留了模型开发的实地调查基础。

The impact of future climate change on glaciated regions of the world (both high altitude and high latitude) has important ramifications for the availability of freshwater. Sectors highly dependent on sustained and robust levels of glacial/snow meltwater during the summer melt season include agriculture, hydroelectric power production, and public availability of freshwater. Other related factors dependent on Earth's glaciers include global sea level, the geopolitics of trans-border river flows, and the dangers of Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs). In certain regions of the world (for example, the countries spanned by the Himalaya) glacial meltwater is the primary source of freshwater yet GLOFs have been on the increase in the Himalaya, the Alps, and the Andes, killing thousands of people and causing millions of dollars in damage to settlements, infrastructure, and livestock. I plan to focus the research outlined below on two sensitive regions of the globe: western Canada (British Columbia and Alberta) and the Himalaya (Pakistan, India, and Nepal).******The physical links and interactions between global climate, regional climate, alpine glaciers, and hydrology have not been explored. There are numerical models for each of these facets of the climate system but linking them together in a robust way that is capable of forecasting is a significant numerical challenge given the disparate spatial and temporal scales on which each component operates.******My group at the University of Alberta has focused on climate change over the western Canadian Cordillera and the Himalaya under a “business-as-usual” emission scenario for the next century, and we have incorporated global and regional climate models to address these issues. We are now focused on a high-end emission scenario using the latest coupled atmosphere-ocean GCM (ESM2M) from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton. The Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) has been our tool for downscaling the GCM data. We have developed a glacier mass balance model within WRF that is interactive with the atmospheric model and can also represent debris-covered glaciers, which are so prevalent in the Himalaya. The next step in this chain of numerical work is to link predictions of glacier mass balance with hydrology and downhill streamflow, with particular attention paid to detailed topography, the possibility of glacial lake formation, and freshwater availability. A number of distributed hydrological models are available that can exploit results from WRF simulations for future climates. We have started by using the SWAT hydrology model and have configured it for use over both Alberta and Nepal.******The proposed research integrates the fields of atmospheric, oceanic, cryospheric, and hydrologic modelling while retaining an element of fieldwork groundtruthing for the model development.********