Syllabus
Preliminary examples of lecture topics:
- State of mountain glaciers at the peak of the Little Ice Age and their subsequent retreat
- Present day mass balance of mountain glaciers and the methods to measure it
- Projected fate of mountain glaciers in the future: rates of retreat, uncertainties involved
- Regional dependence on freshwater from mountain glaciers; current state and future scenarios
- Means of modelling future climate change: GCMs and how they work
- Current state of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica: geographical overview and brief record of their long-term history
- Mass balance of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and the methods to measure it
- Issues of concern with the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets in the warming world: process understanding
- Projected sea level contribution of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets in different future climate scenarios
Annotation
The ongoing melting and retreat of glaciers profoundly change the character of most glaciated mountain ranges, triggering paraglacial activity and affecting water availability in the downstream regions that depend on glacier meltwater supply. In addition, mountain glaciers are also a significant contributor to the current sea level rise.
Polar ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland have an ice volume that corresponds to tens of meters of sea level rise if fully melted. The ongoing climate change has forced these ice sheets into a negative mass balance and their contribution to the global sea level rise has been increasing. Their contribution to the sea level rise is projected to further increase; the rate of change varies with different climate scenarios and is also dependent on specific processes taking place (affecting surface melt and dynamic mass loss). Possible future scenarios range from the sea level rise limited to the first tens of centimeters to several meters over the next few centuries. This has large societal implications; coastal regions will be directly affected and need to start planning their adaptation already now and even landlocked countries will be affected through the resulting chain-reactions and should thus increase their awareness about the issue.
This course will assess the state of the cryosphere with respect to freshwater availability and sea level change.
Processes involved will be described and respective research methodologies to study them will be explained.