Modulation of glacier ablation by tephra coverage from Eyjafjallajökull and Grímsvötn volcanoes, Iceland: an automated field experiment

Möller, Rebecca; Möller, Marco; Kukla, Peter A.; Schneider, Christoph

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-10-53-2018

Articles | Volume 10, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-10-53-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-10-53-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 10, issue 1

10 Jan 2018

| 10 Jan 2018

Modulation of glacier ablation by tephra coverage from Eyjafjallajökull and Grímsvötn volcanoes, Iceland: an automated field experiment

Rebecca Möller, Marco Möller, Peter A. Kukla, and Christoph Schneider

Data sets

Meteorological observations and ablation characteristics during the TIOGA experiment on Iceland in 2015 R. Möller, M. Möller, P. A. Kukla, and C. Schneider https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.876656

Short summary

Deposits of volcanic tephra alter the energy balance at the surface of a glacier. The effects reach from intensified melt to complete insulation, mainly depending on tephra thickness. Data from a field experiment on Iceland reveal an additional minor dependency on tephra type and suggest a substantially different behavior of tephra-covered snowpacks than of tephra-covered glacier ice. The related 50-day dataset of hourly records can readily be used for model calibration and validation purposes.