Pitztaler Gletscher: Melting over Time

Hi there,

Talking about somewhere close to home today: the Pitztaler Gletscher (Lat 46.919, Lon 10.863). This is a ski resort in the Ötztaler Alps, which because of year-round snow availability is especially popular for summer shredding. However, considering the overall negative mass balance of alpine glaciers, it is safe to assume also this glacier's ablation is greater than its accumulation. How much exactly, I'll show you below by using the Innsbruck based Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics (IMGI) glacier inventory.

The ski resort Pitztaler Gletscher (figure 1) stretches across two glaciers: the Brunnenkogelferner and part of the Mittelbergferner (figure 2). Their elevation, ranging from ca. 1500 - 3440 m., guarantees snow availability. While we do not have to worry yet, snow from the glaciers is decreasing rapidly, a process that is projected to intensify under the influence of climate change. As the IPCC AR5 report states, alpine regions are especially sensitive to temperature changes and longer ablation periods and will predictably undergo heavy snow and ice losses.

                           

Figure 1. The Pitztaler Gletscher Ski Resort Map. Source

 Figure 2. Pitztaler Gletscher on Satellite Imagery. Source

This process is documented in the IMGI Austrian glacier inventory, developed by M. Kuhn, J. Abermann and A. Lambrecht at the University of Innsbruc.
To view it, GIS shapefiles and csv data files can be retrieved for the years 1969, 1998 and 2006 respectively here (1969 and 1998) and here (2006, under 'other version'). From comparing area data and placing the layers over each other in ArcGIS or QGIS, the shrinking of the glacier can be clearly observed (figure 3). The data on area in km2 is in the table below.


                 Area  Brunnenkogelferner  (km2)                   Area Mittelbergferner  (km2)
1969                          1.831                                                              11.055
1998                          1.525 (-16.7%)                                                9.924 (-10.2%)
2006                          1.417 (-22.6%)                                                9.615 (-13.0%)

Figure 3. Glacier Area in 1969 (blue), 1998 (orange) and 2006 (purple)

As is displayed above, both glaciers have undergone significant shrinking since 1969, as have most Austrian glaciers. If you would like to know more, read THIS article by Abermann et al. (2009) or have a look at the glacier inventory yourself. As said before, this can be downloaded from the IMGI website. All you need is either ArcGIS, QGIS or another programme that reads shapefiles. Interesting also is a comparison with the Randolph Glacier Inventory or the World Glacier Inventory, for all of which shapefiles are available from the respective websites.

Research Update

Hello all,

I'd like to share a series of posts with you during this summer, keeping you up to date on the research I'm currently a tiny, tiny part of. I'm lucky enough to have been offered a spot in Innsbruck for the coming months, doing the research for my thesis. So right now I have a beautiful view of the snowy Patscherkofel, from the Innsbruck office.

In the project 'Multiscale Snow/Icemelt Discharge Simulation into Alpine Reservoirs' the spatial and temporal melt and discharge patterns of a glacierised catchment area in the region of Tyrol (Austria/ Italy) are investigated.
Coupling  a physically based snow/ice model, a discharge model and, in the future, a glacier evolution model, snow distribution and discharge is simulated. Airborne laser scan and station data from the catchment form vital tools for calibration and validation of the models.
Important goals for the project include the extrapolation to a larger temporal and spatial scale, assessing glacier melt, snow distribution and consequent river discharge under climate change scenarios as described by the IPCC AR5 representative concentration pathways (RCPs).

Orange dot: Innsbruck, red arrow: catchment area (roughly). Source

My teeny-tiny contribution to all of this is, for now, looking at the historic area changes of a glaciers in the Ötztaler Alps. This is done using several available glacier inventories, comparing the inventories' stored data and creating a GIS based 'area over time' map. Using the models mentioned above, I/we will run a hindcast of the catchment, once with station and once with interpolated satellite data. As a result, coupled model performance will be evaluated. Exciting stuff!