Ice and Climate

Glaciological and climate research in the Alps, the Polar Regions, the Himalayas and the Tropics has a long tradition at our institute. The annual mass balance series of Hintereisferner and Kesselwandferner in the Ötztal Alps which were established by our institute extend back to 1952 and therefore are among the longest full glacier mass balance records in the world. In recent decades, glaciers gained increasing public interest as their rapid changes around the world are a prominent feature of the ongoing global climate change. Modern research at the ACINN aims to improve our understanding of the linkages between changing glaciers and the underlying forcings. These may be atmospheric processes influenced by a changing climate but also glacier dynamics or geomorphological features such as debris cover. Our group uniquely combines the expertise of accurately monitoring glaciological and meteorological processes, as well as the competence of putting the measurements into a greater context by developing and using state of the art atmospheric and glaciological numerical models.

Research Topics

Alpine and Tropical Glaciology
Glacier Mass Balance Monitoring
Global Scale Glaciology
Polar Meteorology
Ice Core Studies 
Climate Dynamics
Climate Modelling

Ongoing projects

• Measuring and modelling snow-cover dynamics at high resolution for improving distributed mass balance research on mountain glaciers (Snow-Cover)
• Mountain Climate at the Kilometre-Scale Resolution
• Spatio-temporal variability in water availability and demand in the Peruvian Andes (AgroClim-Huaraz)
• Modelling glacier length changes in Alps on the base of tree-ring based temperature reconstructions for the last 2500 years 
• Mass Balance of Kesselwandferner 
• Mass Balance of Hintereisferner 
• Hintereisferner - an Open Air Laboratory 
  
• International Network for Terrestrial Research and Monitoring in the Arctic (INTERACT)
• Interregionales Gletschermonitoringkonzept für die Region Südtirol-Tirol  (GLISTT)  
•  Atmospheric controls on water stable isotopes in Antarctica (ACOSIA) 
• Quantifying precipitation and its contribution to surface freshening in the Southern Ocean - part of ACE

Completed Projects

• A physically based regional mass balance approach for the glaciers of Vinschgau – glacier contribution to water availability
• Atmospheric Downscaling for Glacierized mountain Environments (DoG) 
• Austrian Glacier Inventory 
• Climate-glacier relationship on Mount Kenya 
• Deuterium excess of polar firn and precipitation origin 
• Development of snow and ice penitents in relation to their impact on surface meltwater production from snow and ice in the semi-arid Andes 
• DML precipitation regime and EPICA ice core Interpretation 
• Dynamics of debris-covered glaciers in the Hindu Kush-Karakoram-Himalaya  
• Glacio-meteorological investigations in Queen Maud Land, Antarctica
• Glaciers-to-Rivers Sediment Transfer in Alpine Basins (GLORI)
• High resolution spaceborne studies of mass balance processes on glaciers of the Khumbu Himal, Nepal (GlHima-Sat)
  
• hiSNOW 
  
• Precipitation mechanisms at Antarctic deep drilling sites 
• Stable isotopes in Antarctic firn 
• The mass balance of Langenferner/Vedretta Lunga 
• The Upper Grindelwald Glacier as indicator for Holocene climate variability
• Towards closing the gap between local scale meteorology and changing alpine glaciers
  Vulnerability to Water Scarcity and Glacier Fed Water Availability in the Tropical Callejón de Huaylas, Peru 
• Reconstruction and Projecting the Global Behaviour of Glaciers from 1850–2300  
• Multidecadal to Centennial Climate Variability: Assessing the Conditions for the Glaciation of Tropical Mountains 
• Downscaling of Climate Variability: Towards an Impact Assessment for Glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru 
• Modeling of debris-covered glaciers 

People