Technical note: Representing glacier geometry changes in a semi-distributed hydrological model

Abstract

Glaciers play an important role in high-mountain hydrology. While changing glacier areas are considered of highest importance for the understanding of future changes in runoff, glaciers are often only poorly represented in hydrological models. Most importantly, the direct coupling between the simulated glacier mass balances and changing glacier areas needs feasible solutions. The use of a complex glacier model is often not possible due to data and computational limitations. The Delta h parameterization is a simple approach to consider the spatial variation of glacier thickness and area changes. Here, we describe a conceptual implementation of the Delta h parameterization in the semi-distributed hydrological model HBV-light, which also allows for the representation of glacier advance phases and for comparison between the different versions of the implementation. The coupled glacio-hydrological simulation approach, which could also be implemented in many other semi-distributed hydrological models, is illustrated based on an example application.

Published in

Hydrology and Earth System Sciences
2018, volume: 22, number: 4, pages: 2211-2224
Publisher: COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH

SLU Authors

• Seibert, Jan

  • Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • University of Zürich

UKÄ Subject classification

Oceanography, Hydrology, Water Resources

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-2211-2018

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/94976