The importance of accurate glacier albedo for estimates of surface mass balance on Vatnajökull: evaluating the surface energy  budget in a regional climate model with automatic weather station observations

Schmidt, Louise Steffensen; Aðalgeirsdóttir, Guðfinna; Guðmundsson, Sverrir; Langen, Peter L.; Pálsson, Finnur; Mottram, Ruth; Gascoin, Simon; Björnsson, Helgi

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-1665-2017

Articles | Volume 11, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-1665-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-1665-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 11, issue 4

Research article

|

14 Jul 2017

Research article |

| 14 Jul 2017

The importance of accurate glacier albedo for estimates of surface mass balance on Vatnajökull: evaluating the surface energy budget in a regional climate model with automatic weather station observations

Louise Steffensen Schmidt, Guðfinna Aðalgeirsdóttir, Sverrir Guðmundsson, Peter L. Langen, Finnur Pálsson, Ruth Mottram, Simon Gascoin, and Helgi Björnsson

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Final revised paper (published on 14 Jul 2017)
Preprint (discussion started on 24 Feb 2017)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'Referee review', Anonymous Referee #1, 28 Mar 2017
- AC1: 'Response to Referee #1', Louise Steffensen Schmidt, 24 May 2017
RC2: 'Review of Schmidt et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 26 Apr 2017
- AC2: 'Response to Referee #2', Louise Steffensen Schmidt, 24 May 2017

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Louise Steffensen Schmidt on behalf of the Authors (24 May 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (05 Jun 2017) by Xavier Fettweis

Short summary

The regional climate model HIRHAM5 is evaluated over Vatnajökull, Iceland, using automatic weather stations and mass balance observations from 1995 to 2014. From this we asses whether the model can be used to reconstruct the mass balance of the glacier. We find that the simulated energy balance is underestimated overall, but it has been improved by using a new albedo scheme. The specific mass balance is reconstructed back to 1980, thus expanding on the observational records of the mass balance.