Publications related to The role of glacier retreat for Swiss hydropower production

The microbial genomics of glacier-fed streams: adaptations to an extreme ecosystem

Glacier-fed streams are the cold, ultra-oligotrophic, and unstable streams that are fed by glacial meltwater. Despite these extreme conditions, they harbour a diverse and abundant microbial diversity that develops into biofilms, covering the boulders and s ...

EPFL2024

On the importance of the humidity flux for the surface mass balance in the accumulation zone of the Greenland Ice Sheet

Sonja Wahl

It is highly uncertain how the humidity flux between the snow surface and the atmosphere contributes to the surface mass balance (SMB) of the interior Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS). Due to sparse observations, evaluations of the simulated humidity flux are li ...

Copernicus Gesellschaft Mbh2024

Climate Change Contributions to Increasing Compound Flooding Risk in New York City

Monika Feldmann

Efforts to meaningfully quantify the changes in coastal compound surge- and rainfall -driven flooding hazard associated with tropical cyclones (TCs) and extratropical cyclones (ETCs) in a warming climate have increased in recent years. Despite substantial ...

Amer Meteorological Soc2024

Into the ice: Exploration and data capturing in glacial moulins by a tethered robot

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Max Mirko Polzin

Glacial moulins (cylindrical meltwater drainage shafts) provide valuable insights into glacier dynamics, but are inaccessible and hazardous environments for humans to study. Exploring them using passive sensor probes has revealed their complex geometry, wh ...

Wiley2024

Characteristics and sources of fluorescent aerosols in the central Arctic Ocean

Benjamin Jérémy Laurent Heutte, Julia Schmale, Ivo Fabio Beck, Margarida Teles Nogueira Rolo, Hélène Paule Angot, Oliver Müller, Jakob Boyd Pernov, Nora Bergner, Alireza Moallemi, Markus Frey

The Arctic is sensitive to cloud radiative forcing. Due to the limited number of aerosols present throughout much of the year, cloud formation is susceptible to the presence of cloud condensation nuclei and ice nucleating particles (INPs). Primary biologic ...

2024

The biofilm ecology of proglacial floodplain streams

Jade Brandani

Glacial forelands figure among the most dynamic landscapes on Earth, and their formation is currently accelerating given glacier shrinkage. Draining these forelands are streams hosting unique microbial communities, which have the capacity to impact both th ...

EPFL2023

Reproducibility Dataset for CRYOWRF v1.0

Michael Lehning, Varun Sharma, Franziska Gerber

This repository contains data required for reproducibility of the results to be published in the associated manuscript. Apart from reproducibility, the attached datasets also serve as templates for new users to adopt CRYOWRF in their research. The datasets ...

2023

Homogeneous Environmental Selection Structures the Bacterial Communities of Benthic Biofilms in Proglacial Floodplain Streams

Leïla Ezzat, Tom Ian Battin, Hannes Markus Peter, Jade Brandani, Tyler Joe Kohler, Stylianos Fodelianakis, Massimo Bourquin, Susheel Bhanu Busi, Grégoire Marie Octave Edouard Michoud

Streams draining proglacial floodplains harbor benthic biofilms comprised of diverse microbial communities. These high-mountain ecosystems are rapidly changing with climate warming, and it is therefore critical to better understand the mechanisms underlyin ...

AMER SOC MICROBIOLOGY2023

Near-bed stratification controls bottom hypoxia in ice-covered alpine lakes

Damien Bouffard, Pascal Perolo, Tomy Doda, Nicolas Thomas Georges Escoffier, Janine Rüegg, Hannah Elisa Chmiel, Hugo Nicolás Ulloa Sánchez, Camille Roland Marie Minaudo

In ice-covered lakes, near-bottom oxygen concentration decreases for most of the wintertime, sometimes down to the point that bottom waters become hypoxic. Studies insofar have reached divergent conclusions on whether climate change limits or reinforces th ...

American Society of Limnology and Oceanography2023

Spatio-Temporal Dynamics of Snow on Central Arctic Sea Ice and its Implications

David Nicholas Wagner

This thesis presents a comprehensive investigation of the interaction between precipitation and wind-induced erosion and deposition of snow on Arctic sea ice. The study uses observations from the 2019-2020 MOSAiC expedition and makes use of the 3D snow cov ...

EPFL2023

Snow-Atmosphere Humidity Exchange at the Ice Sheet Surface Alters Annual Mean Climate Signals in Ice Core Records

Sonja Wahl

Surface processes alter the water stable isotope signal of the surface snow after deposition. However, it remains an open question to which extent surface post-depositional processes should be considered when inferring past climate information from ice cor ...

Amer Geophysical Union2023

CRYOWRF—Model Evaluation and the Effect of Blowing Snow on the Antarctic Surface Mass Balance

Michael Lehning, Varun Sharma, Franziska Gerber

The surface mass balance (SMB) of large polar ice sheets and of snow and ice surfaces in general are incompletely understood because of the complexity of processes involved. One such process, drifting and blowing snow, has only been considered in a very si ...

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION2023

Southern Hemisphere atmospheric history of carbon monoxide over the late Holocene reconstructed from multiple Antarctic ice archives

Jérôme Chappellaz

Carbon monoxide (CO) is a naturally occurring atmospheric trace gas, a regulated pollutant, and one of the main components determining the oxidative capacity of the atmosphere. Evaluating climate–chemistry models under different conditions than today and c ...

2023

Influence of future climate scenarios on the sizing of Building-Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) installations. Case study of a new research-center building in Switzerland

Sergi Aguacil Moreno

This paper analyzes the findings obtained when applying a multi-criteria performance-based method for sizing a BIPV installation considering different weather files, representing historical data (TMY; typical meteorological year) and prospective data (thre ...

2023

Wind, Hail, and Climate Extremes: Modelling and Attribution Studies for Environmental Data

Ophélia Mireille Anna Miralles

This thesis presents work at the junction of statistics and climate science. We first provide methodology for use by climate scientists when performing fast event attribution using extreme value theory, and then describe two interdisciplinary projects in c ...

EPFL2023

Assessing sublimation during snow transport and sublimation effects on the isotopic composition of water vapor

Armin Sigmund

Sublimation influences the water storage in snow covers and glaciers, which is important for water use and projections of the sea level rise. Yet, it is challenging to quantify sublimation for large areas or in conditions of snow transport. In-situ measure ...

EPFL2023

A 2000-year temperature reconstruction on the East Antarctic plateau from argon-nitrogen and water stable isotopes in the Aurora Basin North ice core

Jérôme Chappellaz

The temperature of the Earth is one of the most important climate parameters. Proxy records of past climate changes, in particular temperature, represent a fundamental tool for exploring internal climate processes and natural climate forcings. Despite the ...

COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH2023

Integration of Life Cycle Impact Assessment in Energy System Modelling

Manuele Domenico Margni, François Maréchal, Jonas Schnidrig, Justine Brun

The Paris agreement is the first-ever universally accepted and legally binding agreement on global climate change. It is a bridge between today’s and climate-neutrality policies and strategies before the end of the century. However, government and private ...

2023

A full year of aerosol size distribution data from the central Arctic under an extreme positive Arctic Oscillation: insights from the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) expedition

Benjamin Jérémy Laurent Heutte, Federico Bianchi, Julia Schmale, Ivo Fabio Beck, Lubna Dada, Hélène Paule Angot, Jakob Boyd Pernov

The Arctic environment is rapidly changing due to accelerated warming in the region. The warming trend is driving a decline in sea ice extent, which thereby enhances feedback loops in the surface energy budget in the Arctic. Arctic aerosols play an importa ...

Copernicus Publications2023

A Case Study on Drivers of the Isotopic Composition of Water Vapor at the Coast of East Antarctica

Michael Lehning, Armin Sigmund, Riqo Chaar

Stable water isotopes (SWIs) contain valuable information on the past climate and phase changes in the hydrologic cycle. Recently, vapor measurements in the polar regions have provided new insights into the effects of snow-related and atmospheric processes ...

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION2023