Climate reconstruction of the Little Ice Age maximum extent of the tropical Zongo Glacier using a distributed energy balance model

Abstract

This study assessed the climate conditions that caused the tropical Zongo Glacier (16° S, Bolivia) to reach its Little Ice Age (LIA) maximum extent in the late 17th century. We carried out sensitivity analyses of the annual surface mass balance to different physically coherent climate scenarios constrained by information taken from paleoclimate proxies and sensitivity studies of past glacier advances. These scenarios were constrained by a 1.1 K cooling and a 20% increase in annual precipitation compared to the current climate. Seasonal precipitation changes were constructed using shuffled input data for the model: measurements of air temperature and relative humidity, precipitation, wind speed, incoming short and longwave radiation fluxes, and assessed using a distributed energy balance model. They were considered plausible if conditions close to equilibrium glacier-wide mass balance were obtained. Results suggest that on top of a 1.1 K cooling and ${\sim }$20% increase in annual precipitation, only two seasonal precipitation patterns allow LIA equilibrium: evenly distributed precipitation events across the year and an early wet season onset.

Keywords

• Tropical glacier
• Surface energy balance modeling
• Little Ice Age climate
• Andes
• Climate reconstruction