Daniel Farinotti

ETH Zurich & WSL Birmensdorf - Switzerland

Surface nuclear magnetic resonance (SNMR) is a geophysical technique that is directly sensitive to liquid water. In this study, we evaluate the feasibility of SNMR for detecting and characterizing an englacial channel within Rhonegletscher, Switzerland. Building on prior information on Rhonegletscher’s englacial hydrology, we conducted a proof-of-c...

Glaciers are vital water resources, particularly in alpine regions, sustaining ecosystems and communities during dry summer months. Accurate glacio-hydrological models are essential for understanding water availability under climate change. However, these models face numerous challenges, including limited observations for model forcing, calibration...

Glaciers adapt slowly to changing climatic conditions, resulting in long-term changes in their mass with implications for sea level rise and water supply, even if the climate were to stabilize. Using eight glacier evolution models, we simulate global glacier evolution over multi-centennial timescales, allowing glaciers to equilibrate with climate u...

Mountain permafrost, constituting 30% of the global permafrost area, is sensitive to climate change and strongly impacts mountain ecosystems and communities. This study examines 21st century permafrost warming in European mountains using decadal ground temperature data from sixty-four boreholes in the Alps, Scandinavia, Iceland, Sierra Nevada and S...

Projecting the global evolution of glaciers is crucial to quantify future sea-level rise and changes in glacier-fed rivers. Recent intercomparison efforts have shown that a large part of the uncertainties in the projected glacier evolution is driven by the glacier model itself and by the data used for initial conditions and calibration. Here, we qu...

Global warming is leading to ever faster glacier mass loss in every mountain range in the world. At high elevations and high latitudes – where ice temperatures are often still below the melting point – warming is also penetrating into glaciers and leading to measurably warmer ice. This warming can have a strong impact on glacier dynamics and glacie...

Recent advancements in drone technology have introduced new possibilities for high-density 3D and 4D ground-penetrating radar (GPR) data acquisition over alpine glaciers. In this study, we present a 4D dataset acquired over a near-terminus collapse feature at the Rhône Glacier in Switzerland. The survey covers an area of approximately 100 m x 150 m...

Sediment transport capacity in both subaerial and subglacial channels depends on the shear stress exerted across the channel bottom, which varies with water velocity and channel width. In subaerial channels, water discharge variations are accommodated by flow depth and width changes, along with water velocity. However, in subglacial channels, water...

Glacier retreat presents significant environmental and social challenges. Understanding the local impacts of climatic drivers on glacier evolution is crucial, with mass balance being a central concept. This study introduces miniML-MB, a new minimal machine learning model designed to estimate annual point surface mass balance (PMB) for very small da...

In this work, we aim to improve the ice-thickness distribution map of the APIS by using a two-step approach. Such approach, which readily assimilates ice-thickness observations, considers two different rheological assumptions, and applies mass conservation in fast-flowing areas, where it also assimilates ice-velocity observations. Using this method...

Within scenario-based research of social-ecological systems, there has been a growing recognition of the importance of normative scenarios that define positive outcomes for both nature and society. While several frameworks exist to guide the co-creation of normative scenario narratives, examples of operationalizing these narratives in quantitative...

The mountain cryosphere and groundwater play pivotal roles in shaping the hydrological cycle, yet their connectivity remains incompletely understood. Current knowledge on meltwater recharge and consequent groundwater discharge processes is better developed for snow–groundwater connectivity than for glacier–groundwater connectivity. Estimates of mel...

Glaciers worldwide are retreating rapidly due to anthropogenic climate change. One consequence of glacier mass loss is the destabilization of valley walls as the support provided by the glacier changes and eventually vanishes, a process known as ''debuttressing.'' In this work, we examine the evolution of eight large, active instabilities in southe...

Projecting the global evolution of glaciers is crucial to quantify future sea-level rise and changes in glacier-fed rivers. Recent intercomparison efforts have shown that a large part of the uncertainties in the projected glacier evolution is driven by the glacier model itself and by the data used for initial conditions and calibration. Here, we qu...

Despite constituting 80% of the total number of glaciers in mid- to low-mountain range catchments, the attention paid to very small glaciers (< 0.5 km2) in glacier research remains relatively low. However, glaciers of this size category are expected to undergo dramatic changes. Within Switzerland, more than half are predicted to disappear within th...

More than 60% of meteorite finds on Earth originate from Antarctica. Using a data-driven analysis that identifies meteorite-rich sites in Antarctica, we show climate warming causes many extraterrestrial rocks to be lost from the surface by melting into the ice sheet. At present, approximately 5,000 meteorites become inaccessible per year (versus ~1...

As climate warms, hydrology and geomorphology in glacierized catchments are evolving, changing sediment export from these catchments, thus impacting downstream ecosystems and communities. Currently, much uncertainty persists regarding interactions among geomorphic processes that evacuate sediment from glacierized catchments. Here, we present a catc...

The latest generation of climate models provide temperature and precipitation data at (sub)daily time scales. This data allows investigating how the temporal resolution affects projections about glacier volume, especially since glacier models typically rely on monthly forcing data. But does this really make a difference? Findings from a pioneering...

Intensifying droughts under climatic warming are of widespread concern owing to their devastating impacts on water resources, societies and ecosystems. However, the effects of exogeneous drivers on regional droughts remain poorly understood. Using the Lagrangian method, atmospheric reanalysis data and climate projections from the Coupled Model Inte...

Ground penetrating radar (GPR) has been extensively used in glaciology to infer glacier's ice thickness, liquid water content, water drainage pathways, and other properties. The interpretation of such GPR data is not always straightforward and for temperate glaciers, the signal is often affected by strong scattering and attenuation. It has often be...

Glaciers in the Tien Shan are vital for freshwater supply, emphasising the importance of modelling their future evolution. While detailed 3D models are suitable for well-studied glaciers, regional and global assessments rely on simplified approaches. However, their accuracy remains understudied. Here, we compare the evolution of six glaciers in the...

Accelerating glacier melt rates were observed during the last decades. Substantial ice loss occurs particularly during heat waves that are expected to intensify in the future. Because measuring and modelling glacier mass balance on a daily scale remains challenging, short-term mass balance variations, including extreme melt events, are poorly captu...

Water resources sustainability in High Mountain Asia (HMA) surrounding the Tibetan Plateau (TP)—known as Asia’s water tower—has triggered widespread concerns because HMA protects millions of people against water stress1,2. However, the mechanisms behind the heterogeneous trends observed in terrestrial water storage (TWS) over the TP remain poorly u...

Glacier mass loss affects sea level rise, water resources, and natural hazards. We present global glacier projections, excluding the ice sheets, for shared socioeconomic pathways calibrated with data for each glacier. Glaciers are projected to lose 26 ± 6% (+1.5°C) to 41 ± 11% (+4°C) of their mass by 2100, relative to 2015, for global temperature c...

Debris flows threaten communities in mountain regions worldwide. Combining modern photogrammetric processing with autonomous unoccupied aerial vehicle (UAV) flights at sub-weekly intervals allows mapping of sediment dynamics in a debris flow catchment. This provides important information for sediment disposition that pre-conditions the catchment fo...

Accelerating glacier melt rates were observed during the last decades. Substantial ice loss occurs particularly during heat waves that are expected to intensify in the future. Because measuring and modelling glacier mass balance at the daily scale remains challenging, short-term mass balance variations, including extreme melt events, are poorly cap...

Plain Language Summary The motion of glaciers is often assumed to be smooth and slow. But this is not always true. During hot summer days, the ice of alpine glaciers melts. The meltwater runs through the ice down to the boundary between ice and rock, and builds up pressure. At a Swiss mountain glacier, our measurements show that during times of hig...

Glaciers around the world are shrinking rapidly and will continue to do so in the next decades. Anticipating the consequences resulting from such glacier changes is key to design and implement adequate mitigation measures. Here, we focus on the future evolution of potential ice-dammed and supraglacial lakes in High Mountain Asia, as such lakes are...

The monitoring of glaciers in Switzerland has a long tradition, yet glacier changes during the 20th century are only known through sparse observations. Here, we estimate a halving of Swiss glacier volumes between 1931 and 2016 by mapping historical glacier elevation changes at high resolution. Our analysis relies on a terrestrial image archive know...

The monitoring of Earth’s and planetary surface elevations at larger and finer scales is rapidly progressing through the increasing availability and resolution of digital elevation models (DEMs). Surface elevation observations are being used across an expanding range of fields to study topographical attributes and their changes over time, notably i...

Glacier monitoring in Switzerland has resulted in some of the longest and most complete data series globally. Mass balance observations at individual locations, starting in the 19th century, are the backbone of the monitoring as they represent the raw and original glaciological data demonstrating the response of snow accumulation and snow/ice melt...

Ongoing climate change and associated glacier retreat is causing rapid environmental change, including shifts in high-alpine landscapes. Glacier lakes, which can form in topographical depressions left behind by glacier retreat, are prominent features within such landscapes. Whilst model-based estimates for the number and area of future glacier lake...

Due to climate change and political efforts to increase the share of renewable energy sources, more large-scale water and electricity storage up to the seasonal timescale is needed besides a higher annual hydropower production. A possible response to these demands is to implement new multipurpose reservoirs in regions of retreating glaciers. Anothe...

Glaciers play a crucial role in the Earth System: they are important water suppliers to lower‐lying areas during hot and dry periods, and they are major contributors to the observed present‐day sea‐level rise. Glaciers can also act as a source of natural hazards and have a major touristic value. Given their societal importance, there is large scien...

Currently, about 12 %–13 % of High Mountain Asia’s glacier area is debris-covered, which alters its surface mass balance. However, in regional-scale modelling approaches, debris-covered glaciers are typically treated as clean-ice glaciers, leading to a bias when modelling their future evolution. Here, we present a new approach for modelling debris...

Debris flows threaten communities in mountain regions worldwide. Combining modern photogrammetric processing with autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flights at sub-weekly intervals allows mapping of sediment dynamics in a debris flow catchment. This provides important information for sediment disposition that pre-conditions the catchment for...

With ongoing climate change water availability in the source regions of alpine streams are at stake. In particular, dry mountain regions which currently rely on glacial meltwater will need to adapt. Since rock glaciers are more resilient to climate change and occur in nearly all high‐mountain catchments around the globe with some form of glacieriza...

The englacial and subglacial drainage systems exert key controls on glacier dynamics. However, due to their inaccessibility, they are still only poorly understood and more detailed observations are important, particularly to validate and tune physical models describing their dynamics. By creating artificial glacier moulins – boreholes connected to...

Ongoing climate change and associated glacier retreat is causing rapid environmental change, including shifts in high-alpine landscapes. Glacier lakes, which can form in topographical depressions left behind by glacier retreat, are prominent features within such landscapes. Whilst model-based estimates for the number and area of future glacier lake...

The monitoring of glaciers in Switzerland has a long tradition, yet glacier changes during the 20th century are only known through sparse observations. Here, we estimate a halving of Swiss glacier volumes between 1931 and 2016 by mapping historical glacier elevation changes at high resolution. Our analysis relies on a terrestrial image archive know...

Glacier monitoring in Switzerland has resulted in some of the longest and most complete data series globally. Mass balance observations at individual locations, starting in the 19th century, are the backbone of the monitoring as they represent the raw and original glaciological data demonstrating the response of snow accumulation and snow/ice melt...

Plain Language Summary Glaciers mostly move smoothly and slowly. But regularly at specific locations at the glacier bed, the ice suddenly slips forward. This slip causes an “icequake” which is similar to a small earthquake, but so weak, that one cannot feel it. However, electronic sensors on the ice surface can measure it but lots of information ge...

The glacier-dammed Lac des Faverges, located on Glacier de la Plaine Morte (Swiss Alps), has drained annually as a glacier lake outburst flood since 2011. In 2018, the lake volume reached more than 2 × 106 m3, and the resulting flood caused damage to the infrastructure downstream. In 2019, a supraglacial channel was dug to artificially initiate a s...

Short-term glacier variations can be important for water supplies or hydropower production, and glaciers are important indicators of climate change. This is why the interest in near-real-time mass balance nowcasting is considerable. Here, we address this interest and provide an evaluation of continuous observations of point mass balance based on on...

Currently, about 12–13 % of High Mountain Asia's glacier area is debris-covered, altering its surface mass balance. However, in regional-scale modelling approaches, debris-covered glaciers are typically treated as clean-ice glaciers, leading to a potential bias when modelling their future evolution. Here, we present a new approach for modelling deb...

The glacier-dammed Lac des Faverges, located on Glacier de la Plaine Morte (Swiss Alps), drained annually as a glacier lake outburst flood since 2011. In 2018, the lake volume reached more than 2 × 106 m3 and the resulting flood caused damages to the infrastructure downstream. In 2019, a supraglacial channel was dug to artificially initiate a surfa...

With the Paris Agreement, the urgency of limiting ongoing anthropogenic climate change has been recognised. More recent discussions have focused on the difference of limiting the increase in global average temperatures below 1.0, 1.5, or 2.0 ∘C compared to preindustrial levels. Here, we assess the impacts that such different scenarios would have on...

A deadly cascade A catastrophic landslide in Uttarakhand state in India on February 2021 damaged two hydropower plants, and more than 200 people were killed or are missing. Shugar et al. describe the cascade of events that led to this disaster. A massive rock and ice avalanche roared down a Himalayan valley, turning into a deadly debris flow upstre...

Evacuation of basal sediment by subglacial drainage is an important mediator of rates of glacial erosion and glacier flow. Glacial erosion patterns can produce closed basins (i.e., overdeepenings) in glacier beds, thereby introducing adverse bed gradients that are hypothesised to reduce drainage system efficiency and thus favour basal sediment accu...

Accurate knowledge of the ice thickness distribution and glacier bed topography is essential for predicting dynamic glacier changes and the future developments of downstream hydrology, which are impacting the energy sector, tourism industry and natural hazard management. Using AIR-ETH, a new helicopter-borne ground-penetrating radar (GPR) platform,...

Temperature measurements in boreholes are the most common method allowing the quantitative and direct observation of permafrost evolution in the context of climate change. Existing boreholes and monitoring networks often emerged in a scientific context targeting different objectives and with different setups. A standardized, well-planned and robust...

Glaciers distinct from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are shrinking rapidly, altering regional hydrology¹, raising global sea level² and elevating natural hazards³. Yet, owing to the scarcity of constrained mass loss observations, glacier evolution during the satellite era is known only partially, as a geographic and temporal patchwork4,5....

Since rock glaciers are believed to be more resilient to climate change, water stores therein may become important water reservoirs in future, in particular in dry regions, which currently rely on glacial runoff. In order to estimate and evaluate the future runoff potential from permafrost and rock glaciers, distributed runoff models suitable for h...

Due to climate change, worldwide glaciers are rapidly declining. The trend will continue into the future, with consequences for sea level, water availability and tourism. Here, we assess the future evolution of all glaciers in Scandinavia and Iceland until 2100 using the coupled surface mass-balance ice-flow model GloGEMflow. The model is initialis...

Glacier mass-balance observations at seasonal resolution have been performed since 1914 at two sites on Claridenfirn, Switzerland. The measurements are the longest uninterrupted records of glacier mass balance worldwide. Here, we provide a complete re-analysis of the 106-year series (1914–2020), focusing on both point and glacier-wide mass balance....

With the Paris Agreement, the urgency of limiting ongoing anthropogenic climate change has been recognized. More recent discussions have focused on the difference of limiting the increase in global average temperatures below 1.0, 1.5, or 2.0 °C compared to pre-industrial levels. Here, we assess the impacts that such different scenarios would have o...

The artificial reduction of glacier melt is gaining increased attention due to accelerated ice wastage with atmospheric warming. In Switzerland, active coverage of glaciers using geotextiles is performed at currently nine sites and since up to 15 years. The measures represent an efficient method to locally safeguard the operability of ski slopes or...