High Arctic Glacier variability: State Estimate and climate/ocean Forcing (HAGSEF)

• Applicant: Dr. Marco Möller
• Subject Area: Physical Geography
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 562326873

Under the influence of climate change, the Arctic is the fastest warming environmental region on Earth. It is home to almost 40,000 glaciers and ice caps, forming almost half of the global land ice masses outside the two ice sheets. A significant share of these glaciers is of tidewater type and in direct contact with the ocean. The processes behind their response to climate change thus not only depend on atmospheric, but also on oceanic influences. However, the complex interplay of these two types of forcing and their final combined impact on glacier energy and mass balance is not comprehensively understood, and an internally consistent, region-wide assessment of the different mass balance components and their partitioning does still not exist. The project aims at contributing to a closure of this gap in scientific knowledge by following a two-step approach, focusing on the glaciers and ice caps of the High Arctic region (Arctic Canada, the Greenland periphery, Svalbard and the Russian Arctic). As first step, a state estimate of the current (since 2000) situation of all High Arctic glaciers and ice caps shall be established. This state estimate shall be based on combined information from a glacier-by-glacier modelling of energy and surface/frontal mass balances as well as from glacier-by-glacier data of remotely-sensed albedo and equilibrium line altitudes. As a second step, long-term time series (since 1958) of glacier energy and surface/frontal mass balance shall be modelled and potential relations to climate and ocean forcing and its spatiotemporal variability will be explored by correlation, cluster and wavelet analyses. Based on the state estimate and the climate and ocean forcing analysis, the glaciers and ice caps of the High Artic shall be classified into different types and magnitudes of vulnerability to climate change, which will then ultimately allow for the identification of key regions of climate change influence on the land ice masses of the Arctic.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Ben Marzeion