Abstract:
One of the substantial indicators of global warming and climate change is glaciers melting. The negative mass-balance of some glacier can be affected by factors like energy balance change, change in ice sheet albedo, black carbon effect, precipitation pattern change and etc. Additionally, the shortwave radiation is known as a critical parameter in energy balance change of a glacier. The intensity of the shortwave radiation depends on different variables like cloud cover, solar zenith angle, black carbon concentration and snow grain shape. Absorption of shortwave radiation by surface glaciers decreases ice/snow albedo, and consequently increases glacier melting. The land surface temperature (LST) and the land surface albedo (LSA) have negative correlation. When albedo decreases, as a result of reduction of net shortwave radiation, temperature increases. In some cases, the negative correlation between LST and LSA be affected by black carbon. Soot and dust absorb the large part of the input energy and make the environment warmer. Like all of glaciers in the world, Canadian rocky mountain glaciers are melting and mass loss so faster than expected. It is a consequence of climate change and human pollution emissions (Figure 1). Monitoring of ice/snow energy balance variable changes as surface albedo would be an important issue in glaciology. It is predicted that predicted that more than seventy percent of glaciers in British Columbia and Alberta will be disappear by the end of the twenty-first century [Clark et al,2014]. |
Disclaimer: This website is a class assignment based on preliminary data, and should not be publicized. Thank you