Enhancing mass turnover of the Djankuat Glacier, Caucasus, during the long-term monitoring period

Abstract ID: 3.12794 | Not reviewed | Requested as: Talk | TBA | TBA

Victor Popovnin (1)

(1) Lomonosov Moscow State University, Leninskiye Gory, 119991 Moscow, RU

Categories: Monitoring
Keywords: mass balance, glacier mass turnover, accumulation, ablation, direct terrestrial monitoring

Categories: Monitoring
Keywords: mass balance, glacier mass turnover, accumulation, ablation, direct terrestrial monitoring

Abstract

The Djankuat Glacier in the Caucasus is the most studied glacier in Russia. Its unique series of directly measured mass balance and its constituents has been going on without interruption for 57 years – since 1967/68.
Despite the unequivocal dominance of negative annual balance values, the reduction of the Djankuat Glacier was uneven. Moderate degradation in the XXth century included a 10-15-year-long period (since the late 1980s) of relative improvement in its state, when positive balance values prevailed and its terminus temporarily stabilized. However, with the advent of the XXIst century a clear turning point in its evolution is recorded. The renewed degradation rate became truly unprecedented on the scale of the entire regressive phase after the LIA climax in the 1850s. Physical area of Djankuat reduced by 22% over 50 years, the terminus retreat reached 557 m since 1968, but after 2004/05 its mass balance never took at least a single positive value. Before 2004/05 the average mass balance was -97 mm w.e./yr, but afterwards its mean annual loss has increased eightfold. The total mass loss over the past 57 years has already amounted to ca.19 m w.e.
An obvious tendency of winter snow accumulation to grow up has been observed. However, glacier ablation in summer also steadily increases in modulus, outweighing the positive accumulation trend. However, the last 7-8 years seem to be some emerging exceptions: the increase in winter snowfall accelerated, whereas both the ablation increase rate and the trend towards more negative mass balance slowed down, though fluctuations of the mass balance still remain in the area of negative values.
A persistent trend towards an increase in glacier exchange (i.e., the sum of accumulation and ablation taken modulo) can be traced throughout the long-term monitoring period. This parameter of the mass turnover intensity in the glacial belt serves as an indirect indicator, disclosing weakening of continentality properties in the climate of the Caucasian highlands during recent decades.
The work was supported by Russian Science Foundation (RSF project No. 22-17-00133).

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