Research
The research center "Climate - Cryosphere and Atmosphere" uses present and past observations to understand the dynamics of the atmosphere and cryosphere within the larger climate system and is integrated into the "Mountain Regions" focus area.
Problem definition
Mountains are among the most sensitive environments on Earth. Their complex terrain couples the atmosphere, the land surface, the cryosphere, water systems and ecosystems far more tightly than in lowlands, so that a change in one part of the system propagates quickly through the others. Snow- and ice-covered surfaces, mountain-driven winds, glacier melt, and the exchange of water, energy and trace gases between the surface and the free atmosphere all interact across scales that range from a single leaf to an entire catchment, and from seconds to glacial–interglacial cycles.
This sensitivity makes mountains an early indicator of global change. The effects of a warming climate are especially pronounced here, while rapid shifts in land use and socio-economic conditions reshape water resources, ecosystems and landscapes at the same time. Understanding how these physical, chemical, biological and human processes function — and how they respond to climatic and human-induced pressures — is essential both for fundamental science and for the communities and economies that live in and depend on mountain regions.
Aims
The focus of the "Research Centre for Climate - Cryosphere and Atmosphere" is on the interactions between climate and cryosphere as well as any scientific research within any of these disciplines.
The Eastern Alps are historically rich in climate information and the University of Innsbruck is home to a wide range of world-leading expertise in atmospheric, cryospheric, biospheric, hydrospheric, chemical, geomorphodynamic, and palaeoclimate sciences. The Research Centre Climate – Cryosphere and Atmosphere combines this expertise through interdisciplinary research activities at the interface between the Earth’s surface and the atmosphere with focus on exchange processes and the dynamics of the climate system in mountainous areas over the full range of temporal and spatial scales. From the climate research perspective, mountains are most challenging by the complexity of their topography and hence the dynamic forcing of the atmosphere. Observing and modeling processes governing earth-atmosphere interactions plays a key role for
- understanding the interaction of climate change with atmospheric composition and dynamics,
- understanding the impact of mountainous terrain on large-scale atmospheric flows
- understanding the nature and the behavior of glaciers as climate indicators and water reservoirs,
- deciphering climate history in mountains from typical archives (e.g., reconstructed glaciers and permafrost, tree rings, speleothems and lake sediments),
- projecting future mountain climate as well as related impacts,
- understand how mountains modify the atmosphere on scales from turbulence up to climate, specifically focusing on mountain-induced thermally and dynamically driven wind systems (foehn, katabatic flows)
- characterise the exchange of energy, water and trace constituents between complex terrain and the free atmosphere, including the special role of snow- and ice-covered surfaces;
- quantify the chemical composition of the atmosphere and the turbulent transport of trace constituents through new experimental concepts and field deployment;
- understand how ecosystems act as sources and sinks of matter and energy, and how they in turn feed back on the state and dynamics of the atmosphere;
- model the hydrological storages and fluxes in mountain water systems at high resolution and integrate natural- and social-science perspectives on their functioning;
- monitor glaciological and meteorological processes to reconstruct climate and to assess how changing glaciers affect water resources and sea-level rise;
- reconstruct long-term ecological responses to climatic and human change through the analysis of plant remains preserved in natural and anthropogenic archives;
- and reconstruct environmental and climatic change over glacial–interglacial timescales through the study of cave and surface sediments.
The Alps, and particularly our field sites in the “backyard” of the Innsbruck University (e.g. Hintereisferner; the i-Box etc.), are an ideal laboratory for research, from which universal climate-relevant aspects of surface-atmosphere exchange in complex terrain can be inferred and transferred to other mountain ranges worldwide.
