A5002682591- Cryospheric studies and observations
- Climate change and permafrost
- Landslides and related hazards
- Climate variability and models
- Arctic and Antarctic ice dynamics
- Hydrology and Watershed Management Studies
- Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations
- Transboundary Water Resource Management
- Geophysics and Gravity Measurements
- Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology
- Sensor Technology and Measurement Systems
- Soil Moisture and Remote Sensing
- Groundwater and Watershed Analysis
- Distributed and Parallel Computing Systems
- Tree-ring climate responses
- Computational Physics and Python Applications
- Geological Studies and Exploration
- Child Nutrition and Water Access
- Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics
- Embedded Systems and FPGA Design
- Research Data Management Practices
- Fractal and DNA sequence analysis
- Context-Aware Activity Recognition Systems
- Forest ecology and management
- Time Series Analysis and Forecasting
Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research
2022-2023
Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies
2015-2022
World Meteorological Organization
2018-2020
Norwegian Meteorological Institute
2020
University of Oslo
2019
University of Zurich
2010-2016
A deadly cascade catastrophic landslide in Uttarakhand state India on February 2021 damaged two hydropower plants, and more than 200 people were killed or are missing. Shugar et al. describe the of events that led to this disaster. massive rock ice avalanche roared down a Himalayan valley, turning into debris flow upstream from first plants. The sequence highlights increasing risk Himalayas caused by increased warming development. Science , abh4455, issue p. 300
Abstract. Measurements of environmental variables are often used to validate and calibrate physically-based models. Depending on their application, the models at different scales, ranging from few meters tens kilometers. Environmental can vary strongly within grid cells these Validating a model with single measurement is therefore delicate susceptible induce bias in further applications. To address question uncertainty associated scale permafrost models, we present data 390...
Abstract. Simulation of land surface processes is problematic in heterogeneous terrain due to the high resolution required model grids capture strong lateral variability caused by, for example, topography, and lack accurate meteorological forcing data at site or scale it required. Gridded products produced by atmospheric models can fill this gap, however, often not an appropriate spatial drive land-surface simulations. In study we describe a method that uses well-resolved description column...
More than half of all tropical forests are degraded by human impacts, leaving them threatened with conversion to agricultural plantations and risking substantial biodiversity carbon losses. Restoration could accelerate recovery aboveground density (ACD), but adoption restoration is constrained cost uncertainties over effectiveness. We report a long-term comparison ACD rates between naturally regenerating actively restored logged forests. enhanced decadal more 50%, from 2.9 4.4 megagrams per...
Abstract. Numerical simulations of land surface processes are important in order to perform landscape-scale assessments earth systems. This task is problematic complex terrain due (i) high-resolution grids required capture strong lateral variability, and (ii) lack meteorological forcing data where they required. In this study we test a topography climate processor, which designed for use with large-area simulation, remote terrain. The scheme driven entirely by globally available sets. We...
Snow, glaciers and permafrost translate fluctuations of atmospheric conditions highlight current environmental changes. Monitoring these changes is one the major objectives international climate observation strategy developed by Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). Under ongoing change, implication altering meltwater released snow, ice will become increasingly relevant for fragile mountain lowland environments Central Asia. These affect livelihood, particularly communities but also highly...
Abstract. Spatial variability in high-relief landscapes is immense, and grid-based models cannot be run at spatial resolutions to explicitly represent important physical processes. This hampers the assessment of current future evolution issues such as water availability or mass movement hazards. Here, we present a new processing chain that couples an efficient sub-grid method with downscaling tool data assimilation purpose improving numerical simulation surface processes multiple temporal...
Abstract. This study describes and evaluates a new downscaling scheme that specifically addresses the need for hillslope-scale atmospheric-forcing time series modelling local impact of regional climate change projections on land surface in complex terrain. The method has global scope it does not rely directly observations is able to generate full suite model forcing variables required hydrological hourly steps. It achieves this by utilizing previously published TopoSCALE synthetic current at...
Abstract. Accurate knowledge of the seasonal snow distribution is vital in several domains including ecology, water resources management, and tourism. Current spaceborne sensors provide a useful but incomplete description snowpack. Many studies suggest that assimilation remotely sensed products physically based snowpack models promising path forward to estimate spatial equivalent (SWE). However, date there no standalone, open-source, community-driven project dedicated data assimilation,...
Abstract. Seasonal snow cover and its melt regime are heterogeneous both in time space. Describing modelling this variability is important because it affects diverse phenomena such as runoff, ground temperatures or slope movements. This study presents the derivation of melting characteristics based on spatial clusters surface temperature (GST) measurements. Results data from Switzerland where were measured with miniature loggers (iButtons) at 40 locations referred to footprints. At each...
Abstract. Mountain regions are highly sensitive to global climate change. However, large scale assessments of mountain environments remain problematic due the high resolution required model grids capture strong lateral variability. To alleviate this, tools bridge gap between gridded datasets (climate models and re-analyses) topography. We address this problem with a sub-grid method. It relies on sampling most important aspects land surface heterogeneity through lumped scheme, allowing for...
Knowledge about changes in ground temperatures under a changing climate are important for many environmental, economic and infrastructure applications can be estimated by transient numerical simulations. However, full annual cycle of precipitation data is needed to achieve this, yet often unavailable high alpine regions where lack precludes installation heated instruments capable measuring the solid component. This paper presents method reconstruct year dataset at weather stations, which...
Collaborative Indo-Swiss research on permafrost has thrown new light this rarely studied component of the Indian Himalayan cryosphere. Under a pilot study, first maps estimated distribution in Kullu district, Himachal Pradesh, India have been produced, using combination simple topographic and climatic principles, more sophisticated numerical modelling, mapping indicators. Overall, 9% (420 sq. km) land area is classified as terrain, extending down to low ~4200 m amsl isolated instances....
Abstract. Several studies identified heterogeneous glacier mass changes in western High Mountain Asia over the last decades. Causes for these change patterns are still not fully understood. Modelling physical interactions between surface and atmosphere several decades can provide insight into relevant processes. Such model applications, however, have data needs which usually met data-scarce regions. Exceptionally detailed glaciological meteorological exist Abramov Glacier Pamir Alay range....
Mid-elevation alpine regions are currently undergoing profound changes, with snow cover regimes shifting from seasonal to ephemeral. At the same time, forests around world also large changes due both natural and human-induced disturbances. Quantifying impact of these environmental on requires physics based models that incorporate relevant processes, as well sufficiently detailed datasets forest structure.In last decade, a new generation have been developed explicitly represent interactions...
Spatially distributed meteorological information at the slope scale is relevant for many processes in complex terrain, yet this sub-km spatial resolution difficult to obtain. While downscaling kilometer resolutions well described literature, moving beyond not. In work, we present a methodical comparison of three methods varying complexity, that are used downscale data from Numerical Weather Prediction model COSMO-1 1.1 km horizontal 250 and 50 m over domain highly terrain Swiss Alps. We...
Abstract. Accurate knowledge of the seasonal snow distribution is vital in several domains including ecology, water resources management, and tourism. Current spaceborne sensors provide a useful but incomplete description snowpack. Many studies suggest that assimilation remotely sensed products physically based snowpack models promising path forward to estimate spatial equivalent (SWE). However, date there no standalone, open source software dedicated data assimilation. Here we introduce new...
Abstract. Climate change modifies the water and energy fluxes between atmosphere surface in mountainous regions such as Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (QTP), which has shown substantial hydrological changes over last decades, including rapid lake level variations. The ground across QTP hosts either permafrost or is seasonally frozen, and, this environment, thermal regime influences liquid availability, evaporation runoff. Consequently, climate-induced may contribute to variations levels, but validity...
Commercial, coin-sized iButton temperature logger devices are well-suited for densely instrumenting large outdoor areas. An efficient workflow deploying and maintaining those is necessary when striving to deploy operate several hundreds of data devices. Additionally, a sophisticated management required handling the emerging, amounts meta measurement data. Therefore, we developed iAssist, solution that integrates together with GPS receiver digital camera gathering accurate location...
Abstract. Measurements of environmental variables are often used to validate and calibrate physically-based models. Depending on their application, models at different scales, ranging from few meters tens kilometers. Environmental can vary strongly within the grid cells these Validating a model with single measurement is therefore delicate susceptible induce bias in further applications. To address question uncertainty associated scale permafrost models, we present data 390...
Global climate reanalyses and projections are available worldwide for the past coming century.However, model grids remain too coarse to be directly relevant at hillslope-scale (Fan et al., 2019), requiring adapted downscaling tools account effects of local topography.Mountain regions experiencing accelerated warming with cryosphere rapidly responding change.To understand study geomorphological, hydrological, glaciological changes, we need downscale meteorological timeseries basic atmospheric...
Abstract. Numerical simulations of land-surface processes are important in order to perform landscape-scale assessments earth-systems. This task is problematic complex terrain due to: (i) high resolution grids required capture strong lateral variability, (ii) lack meteorological forcing data where it required. In this study we test a topography and climate processor, which designed for use with large area land surface simulation, remote terrain. The scheme driven entirely by globally...