Dam backup plan for glacier ice loss

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  • Dam backup plan for glacier ice loss
    http://us6.campaign-archive1.com/?u=6e13c74c17ec527c4be72d64f&id=061b309c96&e=08052803c8

    Summer water shortages caused by the reduction of glacier ice mass could be alleviated by dams being constructed to contain springtime runoff from melting snow.

    By Paul Brown

    LONDON, 1 June, 2016 – Building dams at the bottom of disappearing glaciers to capture the runoff from melting mountain snow will be needed later this century to prevent widespread water shortages in the summer months.

    A study of the Alpine glaciers that feed the major European rivers – the Danube, Po, Rhine and Rhone – show that the summer flow will be severely affected by the loss of many of the 3,800 glaciers in the mountains.

    –—
    From dwindling ice to headwater lakes: could dams replace glaciers in the European Alps? - IOPscience
    http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/5/054022

    The potential exploitation of areas becoming ice-free in response to ongoing climate change has rarely been addressed, although it could be of interest from the water management perspective. Here we present an estimate for the potential of mitigating projected changes in seasonal water availability from melting glaciers by managing runoff through reservoirs. For the European Alps we estimate that by the end of the century, such a strategy could offset up to 65% of the expected summer-runoff changes from presently glacierized surfaces. A first-order approach suggests that the retention volume potentially available in the areas becoming deglacierized is in excess of the volume required for achieving the maximal possible mitigation by more than one order of magnitude. Obviously, however, such a strategy cannot compensate for the reduction in annual runoff caused by glacier ice depletion. Our estimates indicate that by 2070–2099, 0.73 ± 0.67 km3 a−1 of this non-renewable component of the water cycle could be missing in Alpine water supplies.

    #climat #glaciers #réchauffement