Glaciology Commons^™

Reanalysis Of The Us Geological Survey Benchmark Glaciers: Long-Term Insight Into Climate Forcing Of Glacier Mass Balance, Shad O’Neel, Christopher Mcneil, Louis Sass, Caitlyn Florentine, Emily Baker, Andrew G. Fountain, Multiple Additional Authors

Geology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Mountain glaciers integrate climate processes to provide an unmatched signal of regional climate forcing. However, extracting the climate signal via intercomparison of regional glacier mass-balance records can be problematic when methods for extrapolating and calibrating direct glaciological measurements are mixed or inconsistent. To address this problem, we reanalyzed and compared long-term mass-balance records from the US Geological Survey Benchmark Glaciers. These five glaciers span maritime and continental climate regimes of the western United States and Alaska. Each glacier exhibits cumulative mass loss since the mid-20th century, with average rates ranging from −0.58 to −0.30 m w.e. a−1. We produced a …