Modelling mass balance and temperature sensitivity on Shallap glacier, Peru

Due to pronounced dry seasons in the tropical Andes of Peru glacier melt water is an important factor for year-round water availability for the local society. Andean glaciers have been shrinking during the last decades but present day's magnitudes of glacier mass balance and sensitivities to changes in atmospheric drivers are not well known. Therefore we have calculated spatial distributed glacier mass and energy balance of Shallap glacier (4700 m - 5700 m, 9°S), Cordillera Blanca, Peru, on hourly time steps for the period Sept. 2006 to Aug. 2008 with records from an AWS close to the glacier as model input. Our model evaluation against measured surface height change in the ablation zone of the glacier yields our model results to be reasonable and within an expectable error range. For the mass balance characteristics we found similar vertical gradients and accumulation area ratios but markedly differences in specific mass balance from year to year. The differences were mainly caused by large differences in annual ablation in the glacier area below 5000m. By comparing the meteorological conditions in both years we found for the year with more negative mass balance that total precipitation was only slightly lower but mean annual temperature was higher, thus the fraction of liquid precipitation and the snow line altitude too. As shortwave net energy turned out to be the key driver of ablation in all seasons the deviations in snow line altitude and surface albedo explain most of the deviations in available melt energy. Hence, mass balance of tropical Shallap glacier was not only sensitive to precipitation but also to temperature which has not been expected for glaciers in the Peruvian Andes before. We furthermore have investigated impacts of increasing temperature due to its multiple effects on glacier mass and energy balance (fraction of liquid precipitation, long wave incoming radiation, sensible and latent heat flux). Presenting these results should allow for better estimates of glacier evolution under changing climate conditions in the Peruvian Andes.