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Measuring and Modeling Snow, Ice, and Avalanches in the Climate...
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Measuring and Modeling Snow, Ice, and Avalanches in the Climate Change Era.

A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Hydrology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2019) | Viewed by 13422

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Daniele Bocchiola

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Polytechnic of Milan, Leonardo da Vinci, 32, 20133 Milan, Italy
Interests: water resources; hydrology; climate change; avalanche risk
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Guglielmina Diolaiuti

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
University Milano, Dept. Environmental Sciences and Policies, Celoria 2, 20133 Milano, Italy
Interests: glaciers morphology and dynamics; climate change; remote sensing of the cryosphere
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Michele Freppaz

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences, Università degli Studi di Torino | UNITO, Torino, Italy
Interests: snow ecology; soil erosion; permafrost; snow gliding and glide-snow avalanches

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Nowadays, snowfall and snow cover formation and dynamics are terribly affected, in the face of transient climate change. Increasingly more erratic patterns of precipitation and temperatures and extreme events therein result into rapider and intenser snow dynamics, impacting on hydrology, soil erosion and stability, and avalanche release. Ice surfaces and glacier are also largely affected, and worldwide, ice bodies are downwasting and ice cover shrinking. Transient intense deglaciation also leads to faster dynamics of ice bodies, including ice avalanches, surges, and GLOF formation, with potentially destructive outcomes. Accordingly, on one hand the mountains and cold environments are undergoing radical changes, affecting the landscapes, ecosystems, and the environment, while on the other hand, an ever-increasing risk is posed to local populations and users.

As such, scientists are called to investigate the changing cryospheric dynamics under transient climate change by using an array of methods, proposing modeling tools for snow, ice, and avalanches dynamics and methods to assess and cope with the associated risks. This Special Issue thus welcomes contribution covering present and prospective dynamics of the cryosphere under present and future climate, including, but not limited to:

  • Monitoring techniques for snowpack and snow dynamics, ice bodies, and avalanches. This includes conventional and innovative methods, such as instruments, devices, methods for local measurements, and remote sensing of snow cover, ice cover, ice flow, GLOFs, etc.
  • Modeling tools for depicting the dynamics of the cryosphere under present and prospective climate. This includes modeling of snowpack, avalanche dynamics (gliding, wet/dry avalanches), ice flow, etc.
  • Models and methods to assess cryospheric risks and to provide countermeasures. This includes hazard/risk mapping of avalanches, GLOFs, design of possible countermeasures, etc.
  • Experimental and modeling studies convering modified cold environments in response to the modified cryosphere. This includes morphology of deglaciated areas, soil erosion from avalanches and ice flows, snow–soil interaction, perma-frost, etc.
  • Scenarios of modified cryospheric processes in response to modified climate in the era of climate change.

Dr. Daniele Bocchiola
Prof. Guglielmina Diolaiuti
Prof. Michele Freppaz
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Snow
  • avalanches
  • glaciers
  • risk/hazard mapping
  • climate change
  • monitoring/modeling
  • cold regions.

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

23 pages, 8565 KiB  
Article
Field Study of Mass Balance, and Hydrology of the West Khangri Nup Glacier (Khumbu, Everest)
by Daniele Bocchiola, Giovanni Martino Bombelli, Federica Camin and Paolo Maria Ossi
Water 2020, 12(2), 433; https://doi.org/10.3390/w12020433 - 6 Feb 2020
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 4781
Abstract
The depiction of glaciers’ dynamics in the high altitudes of Himalaya and the hydrological fluxes therein is often limited. Although sparse seasonal (snow/ice) melt data may be available, dense precipitation networks are not available everywhere, and especially in the highest area, and the [...] Read more.
The depiction of glaciers’ dynamics in the high altitudes of Himalaya and the hydrological fluxes therein is often limited. Although sparse seasonal (snow/ice) melt data may be available, dense precipitation networks are not available everywhere, and especially in the highest area, and the assessment of accumulation processes and mass balance may be difficult. Hydrological fluxes are little measured in the high altitudes, and few studies are available covering flow modeling and flow partitioning. Here, we investigate the snow accumulation, ice melt, and mass balance of West Khangri Nup (WKN) glacier (0.23 km2, mean altitude 5494 m asl), which is a part of the Khumbu glacier in the Everest region, where information of precipitation and hydro-glaciological dynamics in the highest altitudes was made available recently in fulfillment of several research projects. Weather, glaciological, snow pits, hydrologic, and isotopic data gathered during field campaigns (2010–2014) on the glacier and at the EVK2CNR Pyramid site were used to (i) set up the Poli-Hydro glacio-hydrological model to describe ice and snow melt and hydrological flows from the glacier, and (ii) investigate seasonal snow dynamics on this high region of the glacier. Coupling ice ablation data and Poli-Hydro simulation for ca. 5 years (January 2010–June 2014), we estimate that the WKN depleted ca. −10.46 m of ice water equivalent per year m IWE year−1 (i.e., annually ca. −2.32 meter of water equivalent per year m WE year−1). Then, using snowpack density and isotopic (δ18O) profiles on the WKN, we demonstrate that the local snowpack is recent (Fall–Winter 2013–2014) and that significant snow accumulation did not occur recently, so this area has not been a significant one of accumulation recently. Analysis of recent snow cover from LANDSAT images also confirms snow dynamics as depicted. Our study presents original data and results, and it complements present studies covering glaciers’ mass balance as well as an investigation of accumulation zones in the Everest region and the Himalayas, which is also potentially helpful in the assessment of future dynamics under ongoing climate change. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Measuring and Modeling Snow, Ice, and Avalanches in the Climate Change Era.)
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21 pages, 5648 KiB  
Article
Glacier Surface Mass Balance in the Suntar-Khayata Mountains, Northeastern Siberia
by Yong Zhang, Xin Wang, Zongli Jiang, Junfeng Wei, Hiroyuki Enomoto and Tetsuo Ohata
Water 2019, 11(9), 1949; https://doi.org/10.3390/w11091949 - 19 Sep 2019
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3798
Abstract
Arctic glaciers comprise a small fraction of the world’s land ice area, but their ongoing mass loss currently represents a large cryospheric contribution to the sea level rise. In the Suntar-Khayata Mountains (SKMs) of northeastern Siberia, in situ measurements of glacier surface mass [...] Read more.
Arctic glaciers comprise a small fraction of the world’s land ice area, but their ongoing mass loss currently represents a large cryospheric contribution to the sea level rise. In the Suntar-Khayata Mountains (SKMs) of northeastern Siberia, in situ measurements of glacier surface mass balance (SMB) are relatively sparse, limiting our understanding of the spatiotemporal patterns of regional mass loss. Here, we present SMB time series for all glaciers in the SKMs, estimated through a glacier SMB model. Our results yielded an average SMB of −0.22 m water equivalents (w.e.) year−1 for the whole region during 1951–2011. We found that 77.4% of these glaciers had a negative mass balance and detected slightly negative mass balance prior to 1991 and significantly rapid mass loss since 1991. The analysis suggests that the rapidly accelerating mass loss was dominated by increased surface melting, while the importance of refreezing in the SMB progressively decreased over time. Projections under two future climate scenarios confirmed the sustained rapid shrinkage of these glaciers. In response to temperature rise, the total present glacier area is likely to decrease by around 50% during the period 2071–2100 under representative concentration pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Measuring and Modeling Snow, Ice, and Avalanches in the Climate Change Era.)
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19 pages, 6783 KiB  
Article
Parsimonious Modeling of Snow Accumulation and Snowmelt Processes in High Mountain Basins
by Ismael Orozco, Félix Francés and Jesús Mora
Water 2019, 11(6), 1288; https://doi.org/10.3390/w11061288 - 20 Jun 2019
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 4143
Abstract
The success of hydrological modeling of a high mountain basin depends in most case on the accurate quantification of the snowmelt. However, mathematically modeling snowmelt is not a simple task due to, on one hand, the high number of variables that can be [...] Read more.
The success of hydrological modeling of a high mountain basin depends in most case on the accurate quantification of the snowmelt. However, mathematically modeling snowmelt is not a simple task due to, on one hand, the high number of variables that can be relevant and can change significantly in space and, in the other hand, the low availability of most of them in practical engineering. Therefore, this research proposes to modify the original equation of the classical degree-day model to introduce the spatial and temporal variability of the degree-day factor. To evaluate the effects of the variability in the hydrological modeling and the snowmelt modeling at the cell and hillslope scale. We propose to introduce the spatial and temporal variability of the degree-day factor using maps of radiation indices. These maps consider the position of the sun according to the time of year, solar radiation, insolation, topography and shaded-relief topography. Our priority has been to keep the parsimony of the snowmelt model that can be implemented in high mountain basins with limited observed input. The snowmelt model was included as a new module in the TETIS distributed hydrological model. The results show significant improvements in hydrological modeling in the spring period when the snowmelt is more important. At cell and hillslope scale errors are diminished in the snowpack, improving the representation of the flows and storages that intervene in high mountain basins. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Measuring and Modeling Snow, Ice, and Avalanches in the Climate Change Era.)
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