Modelling the response of valley glaciers to climatic change

Abstract

In the context of Global Change research, glaciers are of interest because they register small but persistent changes in climate, and because they affect global sea level on the decadal-to-century time scale. In addition, in some regions glaciers are of great importance for human activities like construction, irrigation, hydropower and tourism., There is a growing need to make projections of future glacier behaviour on the decade-to-century time scale. A better understanding of glacier response to climate change can be obtained by numerical modelling, in which the geometry and characteristic climatic setting of individual glaciers can be taken into account. In this chapter an introduction to glacier modelling is given, including a treatment of ice flow and the micro-meteorological processes that determine the relation between climatic conditions and mass balance.