Publications related to Cryosphere

Influence of sun cups on surface albedo of wet Alpine snowpack

Michael Lehning, Mathias Thierry Pierre Bavay, Francesca Carletti

In high elevation Alpine areas, characterised by high snow accumulation and radiation-driven melt processes, the formation of peculiar ablation features called sun cups can be observed. Sun cups likely influence the energy and mass balance of the wet snowp ...

2024

Turbulence in the Strongly Heterogeneous Near-Surface Boundary Layer over Patchy Snow

Michael Lehning, Dylan Stewart Reynolds, Michael Haugeneder

The near-surface boundary layer above patchy snow cover in mountainous terrain is characterized by a highly complex interplay of various flows on multiple scales. In this study, we present data from a comprehensive field campaign that cover a period of 21 ...

2024

The microbial genomics of glacier-fed streams: adaptations to an extreme ecosystem

Massimo Bourquin

Glacier-fed streams are the cold, ultra-oligotrophic, and unstable streams that are fed by glacial meltwater. Despite these extreme conditions, they harbour a diverse and abundant microbial diversity that develops into biofilms, covering the boulders and s ...

EPFL2024

Global emergent responses of stream microbial metabolism to glacier shrinkage

Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter, Massimo Bourquin, Nicola Deluigi, Tyler Joe Kohler, Michail Styllas

Most cryospheric ecosystems are energy limited. How their energetics will respond to climate change remains largely unknown. This is particularly true for glacier-fed streams, which interface with the cryosphere and initiate some of Earth's largest river s ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Snow Loss Into Leads in Arctic Sea Ice: Minimal in Typical Wintertime Conditions, but High During a Warm and Windy Snowfall Event

Julia Schmale, Marc Schneebeli Zeugin, Markus Frey

The amount of snow on Arctic sea ice impacts the ice mass budget. Wind redistribution of snow into open water in leads is hypothesized to cause significant wintertime snow loss. However, there are no direct measurements of snow loss into Arctic leads. We m ...

2023

The microbiome of cryospheric ecosystems

Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter, Susheel Bhanu Busi, Grégoire Marie Octave Edouard Michoud, Leïla Ezzat, Massimo Bourquin, Tyler Joe Kohler, Stylianos Fodelianakis

The cryosphere includes those parts of Earth where water or soil is frozen, such as snow, ice, glaciers and permafrost soils. Here, the authors present a global inventory of cryospheric microbial communities and their genetic repertoires. ...

Nature Portfolio2022

Wind Transport of Snow Impacts Ka- and Ku-band Radar Signatures on Arctic Sea Ice

Marc Schneebeli Zeugin, David Nicholas Wagner

Wind transport alters the snow topography and microstructure on sea ice through snow redistribution controlled by deposition and erosion. The impact of these processes on radar signatures is poorly understood. Here, we examine the effects of snow redistrib ...

2023

Water vapor transport in snowpacks

Mahdi Jafari

This thesis is an in-depth treatment of water vapor transport in snowpacks and its impacts on snow structure. The aim is to better understand this transport process and to lay the basis for a model representation in physics-based multi-layer snow models. O ...

EPFL2022

Evidence of Strong Flux Underestimation by Bulk Parametrizations During Drifting and Blowing Snow

Varun Sharma, Michael Lehning, Wolf Hendrik Huwald, Jérôme François Sylvain Dujardin, Armin Sigmund, Daniela Brito Melo, Francesco Comola, Koichi Nishimura

The influence of drifting and blowing snow on surface mass and energy exchange is difficult to quantify due to limitations in both measurements and models, but is still potentially very important over large areas with seasonal or perennial snow cover. We p ...

2022

Black carbon and dust in the Third Pole glaciers: revaluated concentrations, mass absorption cross-sections and contributions to glacier ablation

Julia Schmale, Yang Li, Xinyang Li

In snow and ice, light-absorbing particles (LAPs), such as black carbon (BC) and dust, accelerate the melting of Third Pole glaciers (TPGs). In this study, we revaluated LAP concentrations in the snow pits of TPGs (SP-TPGs), measured LAP mass absorption cr ...

2021

The role of air-sea fluxes for the water vapour isotope signals in the cold and warm sectors of extratropical cyclones over the Southern Ocean

Josué Etienne Gehring, Irina Gorodetskaya

Meridional atmospheric transport is an important process in the climate system and has implications for the availability of heat and moisture at high latitudes. Near-surface cold and warm temperature advection over the ocean in the context of extratropical ...

Copernicus Gesellschaft Mbh2021

Evaluating a prediction system for snow management

Michael Lehning

The evaluation of snowpack models capable of accounting for snow management in ski resorts is a major step towards acceptance of such models in supporting the daily decision-making process of snow production managers. In the framework of the EU Horizon 202 ...

COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH2021

Key rules of life and the fading cryosphere: impacts in alpine lakes and streams

Tom Ian Battin, Chenxi Wu, Jun Wen, Xiong Xiong

Alpine regions are changing rapidly due to loss of snow and ice in response to ongoing climate change. While studies have documented ecological responses in alpine lakes and streams to these changes, our ability to predict such outcomes is limited. We prop ...

2020

Patterns in Microbial Assemblages Exported From the Meltwater of Arctic and Sub-Arctic Glaciers

Tyler Joe Kohler

Meltwater streams connect the glacial cryosphere with downstream ecosystems. Dissolved and particulate matter exported from glacial ecosystems originates from contrasting supraglacial and subglacial environments, and exported microbial cells have the poten ...

Frontiers Media SA2020

The Impact of Diffusive Water Vapor Transport on Snow Profiles in Deep and Shallow Snow Covers and on Sea Ice

Michael Lehning, Varun Sharma, Adrien Michel, Mahdi Jafari, Margaux Caroline Patricia Couttet, Nander Wever, Isabelle Amandine Gouttevin

Water vapor transport has been highlighted as a critical process in Arctic snowpacks, shaping the snow cover structure in terms of density, thermal conductivity, and temperature profile among others. Here, we present an attempt to describe the thermally-in ...

2020

Patterns and Drivers of Extracellular Enzyme Activity in New Zealand Glacier-Fed Streams

Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter, Matteo Tolosano, Susheel Bhanu Busi, Tyler Joe Kohler, Paraskevi Pramateftaki, Vincent Henri De Staercke, Stylianos Fodelianakis, Michail Styllas, Martina Andrea Schön

Glacier-fed streams (GFSs) exhibit near-freezing temperatures, variable flows, and often high turbidities. Currently, the rapid shrinkage of mountain glaciers is altering the delivery of meltwater, solutes, and particulate matter to GFSs, with unknown cons ...

Frontiers Media SA2020

Meridional and vertical variations of the water vapour isotopic composition in the marine boundary layer over the Atlantic and Southern Ocean

Julia Schmale, Sebastian Johannes Heinz-Josef Landwehr

Stable water isotopologues (SWIs) are useful tracers of moist diabatic processes in the atmospheric water cycle. They provide a framework to analyse moist processes on a range of timescales from large-scale moisture transport to cloud formation, precipitat ...

Copernicus GmbH2020

Fostering multidisciplinary research on interactions between chemistry, biology, and physics within the coupled cryosphere-atmosphere system

Julia Schmale, Jenny Thomas, Markus Frey

The cryosphere, which comprises a large portion of Earth's surface, is rapidly changing as a consequence of global climate change. Ice, snow, and frozen ground in the polar and alpine regions of the planet are known to directly impact atmospheric compositi ...

2019

Surface Water Temperature Heterogeneity at Subpixel Satellite Scales and Its Effect on the Surface Cooling Estimates of a Large Lake: Airborne Remote Sensing Results From Lake Geneva

David Andrew Barry, Ulrich Lemmin, Abolfazl Irani Rahaghi

The dynamics of spatial heterogeneity of lake surface water temperature (LSWT) at subpixel satellite scale O(1 m) and its effect on the surface cooling estimation at typical satellite pixel areas O(1 km2) were investigated using an airborne platform. The m ...

2019

GRUN: an observation-based global gridded runoff dataset from 1902 to 2014

Gionata Ghiggi, Vincent Humphrey

Freshwater resources are of high societal relevance, and understanding their past variability is vital to water management in the context of ongoing climate change. This study introduces a global gridded monthly reconstruction of runoff covering the period ...

Copernicus GmbH2019