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
- KmMountainsAnalysis: Analysis of Mountain Climate at the Kilometre-Scale Resolution
- LATTICE: Land-terminating ice cliffs in North Greenland: processes, divers and their relation to regional climate
- Atmospheric drivers of glacier change
- PROVIDE: Paris Agreement Overshooting – Reversibility, Climate Impacts and Adaptation Needs
- Certainties and uncertainties in the future surface mass balance of mountain glaciers
- INTERACT: International Network for Terrestrial Research and Monitoring in the Arctic
- Measuring and modelling snow-cover dynamics at high resolution for improving distributed mass balance research on mountain glaciers
- Austrian Glacier Inventory
- Multidecadal to Centennial Climate Variability: Assessing the Conditions for the Glaciation of Tropical Mountains