Poleward shift of the subtropical highs drives Patagonian ice fields mass loss
- 1Laboratoire de Climatologie et Topoclimatologie, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium (bnoel@uliege.be)
- 2Institute for Marine and Atmospheric research Utrecht (IMAU), Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands
- 3Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
- 4Department of Geoscience & Remote Sensing, Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands
The Patagonian ice fields have been rapidly losing mass in the last decades, but little is known about the driving processes. Here we use state-of-the-art regional climate models to reconstruct the contemporary climate and glacier surface mass balance (SMB), i.e., the difference between snowfall accumulation and meltwater runoff, in the Southern Andes at 5 km spatial resolution for the period 1940-2022. Model outputs are further statistically downscaled to a 500 m grid that resolves SMB processes in high spatial detail. Our high-resolution SMB products show good agreement with both in-situ observations and GRACE/GRACE-FO satellite mass change measurements, when combined to solid ice discharge. We link recent glacier mass loss to an ongoing poleward shift of the subtropical highs that warms the ocean and atmosphere nearby Patagonian ice fields, in turn enhancing meltwater runoff.
How to cite: Noël, B., van den Broeke, M., Lhermitte, S., Wouters, B., and Fettweis, X.: Poleward shift of the subtropical highs drives Patagonian ice fields mass loss, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-10112, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-10112, 2024.
