TEMPEST · Global Air TEMPerature ESTimation on high mountain glaciers
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-10-01 → 2023-09-30
- EU contribution
- €191,149
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Global Air TEMPerature ESTimation on high mountain glaciers
The TEMPEST project (‘Global Air TEMPerature ESTimation on High Mountain Glaciers’) aimed at improving process understanding and producing a generalizable parameterization of near-surface cooling above mountain glaciers. This cooling is highly relevant to the accurate calculation of glacier melt and has important impacts upon the current and future estimates of water supply to major mountain river systems. These estimates of near-surface cooling on glaciers is typically ignored or crudely represented through bulk calibration. The project sought to combine new, detailed on-glacier meteorological observations with a wealth of past, community-derived datasets to enhance our understanding about the main controls of temperature distribution on glaciers and their hydrological relevance at the local/regional level. The project moreover leveraged the research lines of the High Mountain Glaciers and Hydrology group (F. Pellicciotti) at WSL, Switzerland to provide a two-way knowledge transfer regarding glacier air temperature and land-surface modelling in glacierized catchments around the world. Its main objectives were to: - To test the hypothesis that warming air temperature on glacier termini is caused by exposure to competing warm and cold winds and debris/valley surface heating and reassessment of existing, global datasets. - To develop a novel, unified model framework to improve on-glacier temperature estimation using a global database of on-glacier air temperature and the global reanalysis data. - To generate an adaptable, open source code implementation for calculating air temperatures of any mountain glacier and assess the impact of this framework on distributed glacier melt in a novel land surface model at experimental catchments around the world.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Glaciers provide a crucial water storage in high mountain environments and contribute to the seasonal freshwater availability for billions of people worldwide. Predicting the current freshwater contribution of mountain glaciers from model simulations is, however, limited by the lack of observational data and process understanding within inaccessible, high elevation regions. As such, glacier melt models make simplistic assumptions about meteorological information, namely air temperature, in space and time. The aim of this proposal is to produce a novel, unified approach for on-glacier air temperature estimation that can be implemented for any mountain glacier on earth by combining unprecedented meteorological data on glaciers with the latest advancements in gridded reanalysis information. The research fellow will combine dedicated field analyses on Alpine glaciers near to the host institution with existing, global datasets of air temperature data on glaciers, to produce a generalizable framework of glacier air temperature estimation that accounts for local interactions of cold and warm air masses and their causes. This framework will be developed and tested within detailed, high resolution land surface models at experimental catchments worldwide. The proposed research will exploit the resources, academic support and expertise of the world-renown supervisor and host institution to provide training to the fellow on model development and implementation for globally-applicable research and outreach deliverables. The scientific results are anticipated to have wide-reaching implications for current and future water resources management in high mountain regions and be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications, public outreach and open access data. The planned supervision, training and collaborative, interdisciplinary research of the action will strengthen both academic and non-academic networks of the fellow and enhance his future career opportunities.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- EIDGENOSSISCHE FORSCHUNGSANSTALT WSL · BirmensdorfCoordinatorSwitzerland
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union