hide
Free keywords:
-
Abstract:
In the Himalayas, extreme precipitation events are rare but recurrent, leading to severe landslides and flooding. Although these remote mountain regions are sparsely populated, natural disasters are often accompanied by significant socio-economic consequences. In recent years, for example in 2014 and 2022, extreme precipitation events have been observed, even in the autumn months when precipitation is usually low. The high precipitation amounts and cool temperatures lead to an unusually high snow cover at high altitudes. In this study, we assess the impact of these snowpacks on the climatic mass balance of mountain glaciers in the Nepalese Himalayas. On the one hand, the insulation effect can be important, but also the increased albedo, which influences the development of the mass balance. We force a glacier energy and mass balance model with reanalysis data using an automatic weather station at Halji Glacier in northwestern Nepal for bias correction. The impacts are quantified by simulating the annual mass balance with the original forcing dataset and with an artificial dataset excluding unusual precipitation events. Furthermore, it is known that snowfall in May and June, at the beginning of the monsoon season, has a great influence on the ablation season, since in addition to the mass input, the albedo also increases, which leads to less absorbed short-wave radiation. Therefore, in addition to the extreme events in autumn, the influence of extreme events during this period will also be investigated.
