Forcing Glacier Models with Climate Scenarios Calculated by SWECLIM.

摘要

Glaciers are normally located in regions with a marked orography, which makes it difficult to formulate appropriate forcing for dynamic glacier models. To study the response of glaciers to greenhouse warming scenarios, output from global General Circulation Models is normally too coarse to provide suitable fields of precipitation and temperature. Here downscaling by means of high-resolution atmospheric models may help. In this report output from such a regional model, SWECLIM, has been used to study the response of two glaciers (Nigardsbreen and Storglaciaren) to a 2.5xeqCO2 scenario. The SWECLIM model is driven by output from the Hadley Centre model. A comparison is made between the changes in glacier mass balance obtained directly from the Hadley output as well as from the SWECLIM output. It appears that significant differences exist, suggesting that the application of high-resolution models is meaningful.