Measurements and modelling of turbulent fluxes at two glaciers in British Columbia, Canada

Abstract:

The most physically-based method to simulate surface glacier melting is by surface energy balance models since they account for radiative and turbulent heat exchanges occurring at the snow or ice surface. Direct measurements of turbulent fluxes, however, are uncommon given the complexity of making reliable measurements of turbulent energy exchange on alpine glaciers. Most studies thus rely on the bulk aerodynamic method used to parametrize turbulent fluxes; an approach that may be inaccurate due to poorly specified empirical coefficients, such as the transfer coefficient and roughness lengths. Here we present direct measurements of turbulent energy fluxes for two alpine glaciers in British Columbia: Castle Glacier in the Interior Mountains for ablation seasons 2010 and 2012, and Nordic Glacier in Canadian Rockies for ablation season 2014. On both glaciers the turbulent heat fluxes may account for up to 35% of energy available for daily melt. Using eddy-covariance method we derive the roughness lengths for momentum, temperature and humidity, and evaluate the performance of bulk method with different parametrizations for transfer coefficient in simulating the turbulent fluxes. Finally, we estimate the transfer coefficient directly from our measurements, and investigate its dependence on meteorological variables measured at the glaciers.