Articles | Volume 10, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-10-53-2018
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-10-53-2018
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

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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.