Ablation process of debris-covered glaciers.

Abstract

The Ablation process of a debris-covered glacier has not been clarified in detail because the observation is difficult on debris-covered glaciers. In the early days of such study, many researchers conducted experiments on the melt rate of ice covered with a debris layer of various thicknesses. But the experimental results difficult to apply to the estimation of the ablation amount of the whole debris-covered area. Therefore, a model was established that could estimate the ablation amount in the whole debris-covered area by using surface temperature distribution. The Ablation amount estimated by the model was larger than that of the observed melt rate for debris-covered ice. Heat absorbed at the supraglacial ponds and ice cliffs on the debris-covered glacier would accelerate the ablation of debris-covered glacier.