Rescue and homogenization of 140 years of glacier mass balance data in Switzerland

Abstract

Glacier monitoring in Switzerland has resulted in some of the longest and most complete data series globally. Mass balance observations at individual locations, starting in the 19th century, are the backbone of the monitoring as they represent the raw and original glaciological data demonstrating the response of snow accumulation and snow/ice melt to changes in climate forcing. So far, however, the variety of sources of historic measurements has not been systematically processed and documented. Here, we present a new complete and extensive point glacier mass balance dataset for the Swiss Alps that provides attributes for data quality and corresponding uncertainties. Original sources were digitized or re-assessed to validate or to correct existing entries and to identify metadata. The sources of data are highly diverse and stem from almost 140 years of records, originating from handwritten field notes, unpublished project documents, various digital sources, published reports, and meta-knowledge of the observers. The project resulted in data series with metadata for 63 individual Swiss glaciers, including more than 60000 point observations of mass balance. Data were systematically analysed and homogenized, e.g. by supplementing partly missing information based on correlations inferred from direct measurements. A system to estimate uncertainty in all individual observations was developed indicating that annual point balance is measured with a typical error of 0.07m water equivalent (w.e.), while the average error in winter snow measurements is 0.20mw.e. Our dataset permits further investigating the climate change impacts on Swiss glaciers. Results show an absence of long-term trends in snow accumulation over glaciers while melt rates have substantially increased over the last 3 decades. The complete dataset is available at DOI 10.18750/massbalance.point.2021.r2021 (GLAMOS, 2021).