Ice Loss in the European Alps Simulated Until 2050

Simulation results from 1999 to 2050 supporting a study on glacier ice loss in the European Alps, published by Samuel Cook of the University of Lausanne in Geophysical Research Letters. The dataset contains NetCDF files detailing initial optimized glacier states and prognostic simulation results, organized by glacier cluster and modeling scenario.

Use Cases

• Projecting glacier volume and area loss until 2050 based on different surface mass balance (SMB) scenarios.
• Comparing ice flow model results using fully assimilated versus partially optimized (NV/NoVel, NT/NoThk) model states.
• Analyzing the impact of SMB-elevation feedback on future glacier evolution.
• Validating deep-learning-aided 3D ice-flow models against historical observations from 1999-2019.

Strengths

• Includes prognostic simulations for two distinct time periods: 1999-2019 (Prog2020) and 2020-2050 (Prog2050).
• Results are provided for 12 distinct glacier clusters (C1 through C12), allowing for regional analysis.
• Dataset is accompanied by the open-source IGM v1.0 model code used to produce the results.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred from the paper or filenames after download.
• Row count and total file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for some users.

Provenance

Source

University of Lausanne

Collection Method

Generated using a fully assimilated, deep-learning-aided 3D ice-flow model (IGM v1.0).

Time Range

1999 to 2050

Geography

European Alps