Matthias Huss

Last Name

Huss

First Name

Matthias

ORCID

0000-0002-2377-6923

Organisational unit

09599 - Farinotti, Daniel / Farinotti, Daniel

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Publications 1 - 10 of 191

Inter-model differences in 21st century glacier runoff for the world's major river basins
Wimberly, Finn; Ultee, Lizz; Schuster, Lilian; et al. (2025)
The Cryosphere
Projected glacier change has important downstream consequences, including sea level rise, changing freshwater supply, and loss of important cultural sites. While the glacier contribution to global sea level rise and associated uncertainties have been quantified in model intercomparison studies, comparatively less focus has been directed towards the interannual changes in runoff caused by glacier recession. The observed effect of glacier runoff on basin-level water availability makes simulated future runoff a particularly consequential target for analysis. In this study, we compare century-scale runoff simulated by three global glacier evolution models. Aggregating annual glacier runoff contributions to 75 globally distributed major river basins, we find that the three models agree closely in some basins but differ dramatically (up to a factor of 3.8) in others. However, when we analyze century-scale runoff changes relative to a glacier model's historical runoff baseline, annual runoff projections are much more consistent across glacier models. Glacier models project broadly consistent relative changes in seasonal runoff supply, with some differences across climatic regions. Estimates of the year of peak water are more consistent across glacier models (when driven by a climate model ensemble) than across individual climate forcings within a single glacier model. We identify the glacier models' different approaches to modifying precipitation forcing as the dominant source of inter-model differences in projected runoff. Our findings highlight the comparative roles of glacier evolution model, global climate model forcing, and emissions scenario as important sources of uncertainty across different metrics of projected glacier runoff. For example, inter-glacier-model uncertainty in absolute annual runoff is large, but the year of projected peak water has much greater inter-climate-model uncertainty. We recommend that users pay particular attention to how a selected glacier model parameterizes and calibrates the glacier climatic mass balance in glaciohydrological modeling efforts.
Imaging spectroscopy to assess the composition of ice surface materials and their impact on glacier mass balance
Naegeli, Kathrin; Damm, Alexander; Huss, Matthias; et al. (2015)
Remote Sensing of Environment
Assimilating near-real-time mass balance stake readings into a model ensemble using a particle filter
Landmann, Johannes Marian; Künsch, Hans Rudolf; Huss, Matthias; et al. (2021)
The Cryosphere
Short-term glacier variations can be important for water supplies or hydropower production, and glaciers are important indicators of climate change. This is why the interest in near-real-time mass balance nowcasting is considerable. Here, we address this interest and provide an evaluation of continuous observations of point mass balance based on online cameras transmitting images every 20 min. The cameras were installed on three Swiss glaciers during summer 2019, provided 352 near-real-time point mass balances in total, and revealed melt rates of up to 0.12 m water equivalent per day (mw.e.d−1) and of more than 5 mw.e. in 81 d. By means of a particle filter, these observations are assimilated into an ensemble of three TI (temperature index) and one simplified energy-balance mass balance models. State augmentation with model parameters is used to assign temporally varying weights to individual models. We analyze model performance over the observation period and find that the probability for a given model to be preferred by our procedure is 39 % for an enhanced TI model, 24 % for a simple TI model, 23 %, for a simplified energy balance model, and 14 % for a model employing both air temperature and potential solar irradiation. When compared to reference forecasts produced with both mean model parameters and parameters tuned on single mass balance observations, the particle filter performs about equally well on the daily scale but outperforms predictions of cumulative mass balance by 95 %–96 %. A leave-one-out cross-validation on the individual glaciers shows that the particle filter is also able to reproduce point observations at locations not used for model calibration. Indeed, the predicted mass balances is always within 9 % of the observations. A comparison with glacier-wide annual mass balances involving additional measurements distributed over the entire glacier mostly shows very good agreement, with deviations of 0.02, 0.07, and 0.24 mw.e.
Future glacier evolution and impact on the runoff regime in the catchments of Alpine reservoirs
Farinotti, Daniel; Bauder, Andreas; Boes, Robert; et al. (2011)
Dams and reservoirs under changing challenges
Mathematical Modeling of Elbrus Glaciers in the 21st Century: Part 1. Glaciological Model and Setup of Numerical Experiments
Postnikova, Taisiya; Rybak, Oleg; Gubanov, Afanasiy S.; et al. (2024)
Atmospheric and oceanic physics
This study fills a gap in the long-term assessments of Elbrus glacier parameters, using the GloGEMflow-DD (debris dynamics) model to simulate the glacier evolution. Part 1 provides a detailed description of the model architecture. The model consists of three modules, responsible for calculations of surface mass balance, glacier flow and debris cover transformation. Debris cover expands and thickens as glacier degradation continues. This is important to consider, since a thicker debris layer retards the ice melting. Predictions are based on the data on temperature and precipitation for five SSP climate scenarios from the CMIP6 project. A temperature index method is used to calculate the surface mass balance, taking into account the influence of the debris cover: the ablation of pure ice is adjusted in accordance with the area and thickness of the debris cover. The ice flow module updates the geometry of glaciers and debris cover. The adaptation specific to Elbrus includes the adjustment of the debris cover transformation module, aligning with the geological characteristics of the region. Notably, slope erosion and rockfalls on the glaciers of the volcanic peak can be neglected, with basal debris constituting the main source of surface debris on the glaciers of Elbrus. Hence, the debris-cover source in the model is specified to be the result of bedrock erosion rather than slope erosion. The paper discusses calibration processes that allow using simple modeling methods, such as positive degree-day for surface mass balance, to mimic the real behavior of glaciers. Despite the fact that the validation of the model revealed a slight underestimation of mass loss at the beginning of the 21st century, the general patterns of mass loss are reproduced correctly, although the energy balance has not been explicitly described. Thus, the adjustment of the model ensures its adaptation to the glaciation conditions on Elbrus.
Retreat Scenarios of Unteraargletscher, Switzerland, Using a Combined Ice-Flow Mass-Balance Model
Huss, Matthias; Sugiyama, Shin; Bauder, Andreas; et al. (2007)
Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research
Limited impact of climate forcing products on future glacier evolution in Scandinavia and Iceland
Compagno, Loris; Zekollari, Harry; Huss, Matthias; et al. (2021)
Journal of Glaciology
Due to climate change, worldwide glaciers are rapidly declining. The trend will continue into the future, with consequences for sea level, water availability and tourism. Here, we assess the future evolution of all glaciers in Scandinavia and Iceland until 2100 using the coupled surface mass-balance ice-flow model GloGEMflow. The model is initialised with three distinct past climate data products (E-OBS, ERA-I, ERA-5), while future climate is prescribed by both global and regional climate models (GCMs and RCMs), in order to analyze their impact on glacier evolution. By 2100, we project Scandinavian glaciers to lose between 67 ± 18% and 90 ± 7% of their present-day (2018) volume under a low (RCP2.6) and a high (RCP8.5) emission scenario, respectively. Over the same period, losses for Icelandic glaciers are projected to be between 43 ± 11% (RCP2.6) and 85 ± 7% (RCP8.5). The projected evolution is only little impacted by both the choice of climate data products used in the past and the spatial resolution of the future climate projections, with differences in the ice volume remaining by 2100 of 7 and 5%, respectively. This small sensitivity is attributed to our model calibration strategy that relies on observed glacier-specific mass balances and thus compensates for differences between climate forcing products.
Very small glaciers under climate change: from the local to the global scale
Huss, Matthias; Fischer, Mauro (2015)
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
Disappearing World Heritage Glaciers as a Keystone of Nature Conservation in a Changing Climate
Bosson, Jean-Baptiste; Huss, Matthias; Osipova, Elena (2019)
Earth's Future
Since 1972, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Convention aims to identify and protect sites of Outstanding Universal Value for future generations. However, growing impacts of climate change are of the utmost concern for the integrity of many sites. Here, we inventory the glaciers present in natural World Heritage sites for the first time. We found 19,000 glaciers in 46 sites located all over the world. We analyze their recent evolution, current state, and project their mass change over the 21st century. Our results are based on a comprehensive review of the literature as well as a state‐of‐the‐art glaciological model for computing glacier responses up to 2100. Illustrating the strong influence of CO2 emission scenarios and human actions on future ice loss magnitude, we project the wastage of 33% to 60% of the 2017 cumulative ice volume of 12,000 km3 of World Heritage glaciers by 2100. Furthermore, we expect complete glacier extinction in 8 to 21 of the investigated World Heritage sites until the end of the century, depending on the climate scenario. We suggest that World Heritage glaciers should be considered as analogs to endangered umbrella, keystone, and flagship species, whose conservation would secure wider environmental and social benefits at global scale.
Multi-decadal mass balance series of three Kyrgyz glaciers inferred from modelling constrained with repeated snow line observations
Barandun, Martina; Huss, Matthias; Usubaliev, Ryskul; et al. (2018)
The Cryosphere
Glacier surface mass balance observations in the Tien Shan and Pamir are relatively sparse and often discontinuous. Nevertheless, glaciers are one of the most important components of the high-mountain cryosphere in the region as they strongly influence water availability in the arid, continental and intensely populated downstream areas. This study provides reliable and continuous surface mass balance series for selected glaciers located in the Tien Shan and Pamir-Alay. By cross-validating the results of three independent methods, we reconstructed the mass balance of the three benchmark glaciers, Abramov, Golubin and Glacier no. 354 for the past 2 decades. By applying different approaches, it was possible to compensate for the limitations and shortcomings of each individual method. This study proposes the use of transient snow line observations throughout the melt season obtained from satellite optical imagery and terrestrial automatic cameras. By combining modelling with remotely acquired information on summer snow depletion, it was possible to infer glacier mass changes for unmeasured years. The model is initialized with daily temperature and precipitation data collected at automatic weather stations in the vicinity of the glacier or with adjusted data from climate reanalysis products. Multi-annual mass changes based on high-resolution digital elevation models and in situ glaciological surveys were used to validate the results for the investigated glaciers. Substantial surface mass loss was confirmed for the three studied glaciers by all three methods, ranging from −0.30 ± 0.19 to −0.41 ± 0.33 m w.e. yr−1 over the 2004–2016 period. Our results indicate that integration of snow line observations into mass balance modelling significantly narrows the uncertainty ranges of the estimates. Hence, this highlights the potential of the methodology for application to unmonitored glaciers at larger scales for which no direct measurements are available.

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Matthias Huss

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