ИСТИНА

Recent efforts by the Institute of Geography RAS have been aimed at establishing mass balance observation at Austre Grønfjordbreen (7,6 km2) located 16 km south of Barentsburg, Svalbard. The glaciers of Svalbard have already experienced an unprecedented increase in average summer temperatures, melt periods, and rainfall in late autumn and early summer. Noteworthy a full absence of Austre Grønfjordbreen accumulation zone was pointed out in recent years. Current goal is to determine the approach for mass balance simulations of Austre Grønfjordbreen and model application for long time periods assessments. The physical and mathematical modelling of the internal and external mass transfer of Austre Grønfjordbreen glacier were carried out using the field work data and remote observations. The dependence of the mass balance from the certain climatic factors is revealed. We apply spatially distributed model A-MELT (Rets et al., 2012) using all available glaciological and meteorological measurements carried out since 2012 and energy balance determination according to spatial grid. The snow line level has been reconstructed using all available satellite images from 1986 to 2016. The obtained mass balance gradients are compared with the results of temperature-index simulations and traditional glaciological methods.