Comparative study of the surface energy and mass balance of Kersten Glacier on Mt. Kilimanjaro: COSIPY versus previous modeling

Kersten Glacier, a slope glacier on the southern flank of Kilimanjaro, has been observed to shrink for many decades. Quantitatively, the glacier’s mass balance has been studied by Mölg et al. (2009) with a distributed physically based mass balance model. In this study, the research question is revisited using the open-source COupled Snowpack and Ice surface energy and mass balance model in PYthon (COSIPY; Sauter et al., 2020). A spatially distributed simulation of the surface energy and mass balance of Kersten Glacier is performed for February 2005 to January 2008. The model is driven by hourly observations from an automated weather station in the top region of the glacier at 5873 m MSL. In this contribution, we present findings such as the different components of the mass and energy balance, their temporal variation and elevational characteristics, and compare them to the results obtained from the 2009 analysis. This should allow a first assessment of COSIPY’s skill as a future tool for simulating snow and ice variability in equatorial latitudes.