Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

We request a sensor for measuring vertical profile of temperature and wind speed above glacier surfaces. The measurements are critically needed for development of better models of glacier contribution to streamflow and sea level rise. The retreat of mountain glaciers worldwide is a key indicator of modern climate change, with mass loss from glaciers contributing to sea level rise and to seasonal streamflow. Across Western Canada, maintenance of summer streamflow by glacier runoff is essential for hydro-power generation, agricultural irrigation and water supply. The coming decades will see rapid and unprecedented changes to glaciers worldwide. However, current glacier models for regional and global scale application are calibration-dependent and, due to sparsity of data for calibration, suffer from >50% uncertainty range in their simulations. There is an urgent need to narrow the uncertainty, and our goal is to address this need by developing physics-based models for glacier melt applicable for regional and global scales. These models are calibration independent and universally applicable, but require input climate data (e.g. incoming solar and longwave radiation, near-surface temperature and wind speed), commonly obtained from modelled climate fields that are too coarsely resolved to adequately represent local-scale processes driving glacier melt. The key challenges in this approach, are to successfully `downscale' the wind and temperature fields, and to adequately simulate turbulent heat fluxes, which are important contributors to melt. We will tackle these challenge by developing a katabatic model for downscaling of wind and temperature, and by improving current methods for assessing turbulent heat fluxes. But, in order to succeed, we critically need vertical profile measurements of wind speed, temperature and turbulent characteristics so that these new models/methods can be developed and validated. These measurements are essential missing component in our existing monitoring network of near-surface measurements and remote-sensing observations of glaciers in Western Canada. This proposal requests a cost-effective sensor, which has not yet been used at mountain glaciers, for vertical profile measurements at glaciers across Western Canada. The requested sensor will advance several ongoing research projects involving existing and future HQP across at least three universities. By advancing the modelling of glacier melt, we will ultimately provide more credible projections of glacier contribution to sea-level rise and streamflow at the level of detail necessary to inform local policy makers and user communities. Funded personnel working with this equipment will contribute to the cutting-edge research on risk assessment of freshwater resources under climate change, and will receive high-level training in geosciences, computing and data analysis, preparing them for a broad range of opportunities in academia, government or private industry.