CECS Glacier Research
Andrés Rivera and the CECs team
Laboratorio de Glaciología y Cambio Climático Centro de Estudios Científicos (CECS), Valdivia
Who we are?
SENIOR RESEARCHERSGino Casassa Andrés Rivera
ASSOCIATED RESEARCHERS
Robert Thomas, NASA Wallops Flight Facility, USA Eric Rignot, JPL-NASA, USA
Norbert Blindow, BGR
POST-DOCTORAL FELLOWS
Marious Schaefer Anja Wendt
ASSISTANT RESEARCHERS (present and formers)
Daniela Carrión (Geographer) Francisca Bown (Geographer MSc) Sebastián Cisternas (Computer Engineer)
Juan Andrés Uribe (Electronic Engineer) Rodrigo Zamora (Electronic Engineer)
Thomas Loriaux (MSc)
Claudio Bravo (presently at UCH)
Pablo Zenteno (presently in a private company)
RESIDENT OFFICERS
Max Fuentealba, Chilean Air Force
UNDERGRADUATES STUDENTS
Our key issues
We would like to
Define a Chilean glacier base line
Study remote and “virgin” areas
Apply airborne, ground and oceanographic geophysical methods
Develop new technologies for glacier research
Improve our capacity building effort
Provide information for decision makers
Trying to answer the following questions:
How are the glaciers responding to climatic changes?
Are all glaciers good indicators of climate change?
What are the consequences of recent glacier behaviour for our population and economic activities?
What are the consequences of human activities on glacier behaviour?
Could be possible to model glacier dynamics and the consequences of the glacier responses?
Main problems for glaciological research in Chile
Scarce and poor availability of field data
Lack of regular and accurate glacier cartography
Limited budgets for software/hardware/data/training/monitoring
Inefficient and bureaucratic data distribution among national
institutions
Reduced collaboration between scientists and institutions
Few systematic monitoring programs
State of art in Chile
Almost complete but out of date glacier inventory
Frontal, areal and ice elevation changes have been analysed for
hundred of glaciers combining historical records, remotely sensed imagery and field data
Preliminary satellite image data base
GIS data base for restricted number of glaciers including surface
topography, frontal variations, available imagery
Several glaciological methods have been applied; Remote sensing,
GPS, LIDAR, RES (ground, airborne, helicopter borne), Fixed cameras, AWS’s, Sonars, ice coring, modelling, runoff.
Some statistics
•Postgraduate people in glaciology: <10 •Pre-post degrees in glaciology: 0
•Institutions doing glacier research: <10
•Number of glaciology related grants funded in Chile in recent years: <15 (of 9979)
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 DÉCADAS N ° P U BL IC AC IO N ES
Hydro-meteorological stations for glacier
studies
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30Distancia mínima a una fuente glaciar [km]
N úm er o de es tac iones 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
Diferencia de elevación estacion-glaciar [m]
Previous CECs studies
Glacier inventory
Northern and Southern Patagonian icefields
Aconcagua basin
Cordillera Darwin, Mte Sarmiento, isla Santa Inés, isla Hoste
Nevados de Payachatas
Several ice-capped volcanoes in southern Chile
Frontal, areal and volumetric changes
Almost 150 studied glaciers all around the country
Mass and energy balance
In 2003, CECS initiated a systematic program on Glaciar Mocho at Volcán Mocho, in the Chilean lake District.
Geodetic mass balance estimations in several glaciers
There is one glacier where a mass balance model has been applied
Several AWS´s installed on top of glaciers in central-southern Chile in combination with met data analysis and cameras
Applied geophysics
LIDAR of more than 40 glaciers.
RES (ground and airborne) of more than 50 glaciers
Sonar/calving studies of more than 5 glaciers
Ice velocities in more than 5 glaciers (GPS, feature tracking cameras)
Ice volcanic interactions using thermal cameras in 3 volcanoes
Glacio-chemistry
Several short ice cores and snow samples for biological and chemical studies
First glacier inventory south of the Estrecho de Magallanes: 3289km2 Isla Santa Inés: 274 km2
Monte Sarmiento: 273 km2
Cordillera Darwin: 2333 km2
Isla Hoste: 409 km2
A mountain glacier (Alpine?)
Glaciar Universidad
Field data collection and preliminary models:
-0,8 -0,6 -0,4 -0,2 0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0 800 1600 2400 3200 Nº Registro D if er en ci a ( m ) 8 Mayo 2009 28 Marzo 2009 -5 0 5 10 15 20 0 800 1600 2400 3200 Nº de Registro T em p er at u ra ( ºC ) 28 Marzo 2009 8 Mayo 2009 Ablation Temperatures AWS at accumulation and ablation zones0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 2200 2400 2600 2800 3000 mm e q . a . Modelled versus measured ablation Records 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 Dates G loba l R a di a ti on ( W m -2) Global radiation
Hydrological station affected by the
March 11, 2010 Earthquake
-7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 2400 2500 2600 2700 2800 2900 3000 3100 3200 3300 3400 Altitud SRTM (m s.n.m.) C am b io s d e el eva ci ó n ( m /a) 1955/2009 2000/2009
Ice velocities from fixed cameras (m/d)
7 - 10 10 - 14 14 - 17 17 - 24
Thermal studies
Perfil Nocturno píxel 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 TºC 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 Temperatura v/s pixelVolcán Villarrica, Mayo 13, 2010
Accumulation (a), ablation (b) y mass balance (c) in m w. eq. a-1 (a) (b) (c) 2003/2004 2004/2005 (a) (b) (c) -0.88 +0.36
LIDAR and THERMAL surveys: Volcán Hudson
7 - 1010 - 14 14 - 17 17 - 24
Some methods everywhere: Ice thickness
Helicopter borne radar
survey in Central Chile
A
B
A
B
Juncal Sur Glacier
CAMS profile versus SRTM
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 10000 11000 12000 13000 14000 15000 16000 17000 18000 19000 Distance (m) A lt it u d e ( m a e )Outwash Plain Missing Lake
Outwash Plain Lake Ice
Ice
Lake Ice
Missing Lake
Lake Valley Lake River
SRTM 2000 CECS 2007 Sea Level Ice Lake Moraine Moraine
A
A’
A
A’
Glaciar Témpanos Glaciar Bernardo 1975-2000 -4.7± 0.8 -3.6 ± 0.8 2000-2007 -4.9 ± 3.0 -8.1 ± 3.0October 10, 2008
Detail Glacier Monitoring Programme
(DGMP)
Northern Chile (CEAZA?)
- Glaciar Tapado - Location: 30°08’S
Central Chile (DGA-ACQWA-CECS-UCH?)
- Glaciares Juncal Norte, EchaurrenOlivares -Universidad
- Location: 33°-34°’S -
Lake District (CECS)
- Glaciares Chillán-Villarrica and Mocho - Location: 39°S Field Instrumentation - AWS - Gauge stations - Stake network - Photogrammetric cameras
Ground and airborne survey
- GPR and GPS
- Airborne and terrestrial Laser scanning
-Aerial photogrammetry
-Thermal and normal cameras
Aisén (DGA-CECS)
- Glaciar San rafael-Colonia - Nef- Jorge Montt
Location: 46-48°S
Magallanes
-Glaciar Pio XI (CECS) -Glaciar Grey (UMAG) -GCP (Trier U.)
Monitoring network
implementation
Future tasks
CECs will hold an ACCION workshop in Valdivia
In May 2012 we will have technical meeting (CECS-DGA) with USGS and
colleagues from VTI for testing GASS.
In August 2012 we will have a training course in collaboration with the US
Embassy and the USGS (GASS). The idea is having a few days in Valdivia and then going to Volcán Mocho with colleagues from other institutions in Chile.
Both workshops may be together or one after the other.
Looking for new students
Searching for Postdocs (mainly from abroad) interested in doing research in our
Conclusions and recommendations
Most of our glaciers are retreating fast, however not everything is related to
Climate change¡¡¡¡ In Chile there are many “anomalies”.
What is an anomaly? Each glacier has particular settings, and no one is an
easy one (Alpine?)
We don’t have enough trained people to do research in the country
We have a lot of requests from the government, private companies and the
academia, but we are too few and with limited time for everything
Budget is also a restriction, especially when bureaucrats are taking control
of some funding agencies
We don’t have people doing glacier modelling
Modelling is very restrict due to the lack of data for many regions. We need
Thanks
