Recent Increases in Winter Snowfall Provide Resilience to Very Small Glaciers in the Julian Alps, Europe
- Colucci, Renato R.
- Zebre, Manja
- Torma, Csaba
- Glasser, Neil F.
- Maset, Eleonora
DOIAbstract
Very small glaciers (<0.5 km(2)) account for more than 80% of the total number of glaciers and more than 15% of the total glacier area in the European Alps. This study seeks to better understand the impact of extreme snowfall events on the resilience of very small glaciers and ice patches in the southeastern European Alps, an area with the highest mean annual precipitation in the entire Alpine chain. Mean annual precipitation here is up to 3300 mm water equivalent, and the winter snow accumulation is approximately 6.80 m at 1800 m asl averaged over the period 1979-2018. As a consequence, very small glaciers and ice/firn patches are still present in this area at rather low altitudes (1830-2340 m). We performed repeated geodetic mass balance ...
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