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The ongoing melting and retreat of glaciers profoundly change the character of most glaciated mountain ranges,
triggering paraglacial activity and affecting water availability in the downstream regions that depend on glacier meltwater supply. In addition, mountain glaciers are also a significant contributor to the current sea level rise. Polar ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland have an ice volume that corresponds to tens of meters of sea level rise if fully melted. The ongoing climate change has forced these ice sheets into a negative mass balance and their contribution to the global sea level rise has been increasing. Their contribution to the sea level rise is projected to further increase; the rate of change varies with different climate scenarios and is also dependent on specific processes taking place (affecting surface melt and dynamic mass loss). Possible future scenarios range from the sea level rise limited to the first tens of centimeters to several meters over the next few centuries. This has large societal implications; coastal regions will be directly affected and need to start planning their adaptation already now and even landlocked countries will be affected through the resulting chain-reactions and should thus increase their awareness about the issue. This course will assess the state of the cryosphere with respect to freshwater availability and sea level change. Processes involved will be described and respective research methodologies to study them will be explained. Last update: Kliment Zdeněk, doc. RNDr., CSc. (13.05.2020)
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Relevant literature: Brun, F. et al. (2017). A spatially resolved estimate of High Mountain Asia glacier mass balances from 2000 to 2016. Nature geoscience, 10(9), 668-673. Edwards, T.L. et al. (2019). Revisiting Antarctic ice loss due to marine ice-cliff instability. Nature, 566(7742), 58-64. Fischer, A. et al. (2015). Tracing glacier changes in Austria from the Little Ice Age to the present using a lidar-based high-resolution glacier inventory in Austria. Cryosphere, 9(2). Golledge, N.R.et al. (2019). Global environmental consequences of twenty-first-century ice-sheet melt. Nature, 566(7742), 65-72. Hanna, E. et al. (2020). Mass balance of the ice sheets and glaciers-Progress since AR5 and challenges. Earth-Science Reviews, 201, 102976. Huss, M., & Hock, R. (2018). Global-scale hydrological response to future glacier mass loss. Nature Climate Change, 8(2), 135-140. Pattyn, F. et al. (2018). The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets under 1.5 C global warming. Nature climate change, 8(12), 1053-1061. Pattyn, F., & Morlighem, M. (2020). The uncertain future of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Science, 367(6484), 1331-1335. Rodell, M.et al. (2018). Emerging trends in global freshwater availability. Nature, 557(7707), 651-659. Scambos, T. A. et al. (2017). How much, how fast?: A science review and outlook for research on the instability of Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier in the 21st century. Global and Planetary Change, 153, 16-34. Shepherd, A. et al. (2018). Mass balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2017. Nature, 558(C10), 219-222. Shepherd, A. et al. (2019). Mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2018. Nature, 579(7798), 233-239. Tapley, B.D. et al. (2019). Contributions of GRACE to understanding climate change. Nature climate change, 9(5), 358-369. Zekollari, H. et al. (2019). Modelling the future evolution of glaciers in the European Alps under the EURO-CORDEX RCM ensemble. The Cryosphere, 13(4), 1125-1146. Zemp, M. et al. (2019). Global glacier mass changes and their contributions to sea-level rise from 1961 to 2016. Nature, 568(7752), 382-386. Last update: Kliment Zdeněk, doc. RNDr., CSc. (13.05.2020)
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Preliminary examples of lecture topics:
Last update: Kliment Zdeněk, doc. RNDr., CSc. (13.05.2020)
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