Stefanie Gubler

• SCNAT

Data on past debris flows is normally scarce and biased towards large events or catchments close to settlements. Reconstructing past process activity with dendrogeomorphic approaches can help develop unbiased and spatially comprehensive timeseries, typically at annual resolution. Likewise, hydrometeorological data are often limited by low spatial o...

Snow plays a crucial role in regional climate systems worldwide. It is a key variable in the context of climate change because of its direct feedback to the climate system, while at the same time being very sensitive to climate change. Long-term spatial data on snow cover and snow water equivalent are scarce, due to the lack of satellite data or fo...

The breeding phenology of birds is often timed to coincide with a peak in food availability. However, the shortening of the vegetation period with increasing elevation may force bird species at high elevations to breed earlier in relation to optimal environmental conditions due to time constraints. We investigated differences in fledging dates in f...

With the increased occurrence of hot spells in recent years, there is growing interest in quantifying the recurrence of extreme temperature events. However, pronounced temperature anomalies occur all year round, and a reliable classification in terms of the time of occurrence in the year is needed. In this study, we present a novel approach to clas...

Snow cover plays a crucial role in regional climate systems worldwide. It is a key variable in the context of climate change because of its direct feedback to the climate system, while at the same time being very sensitive to climate change. Accurate long-term spatial data on snow cover are scarce, due to the lack of satellite data or forcing data...

The rainy season is of high importance for livelihoods in the Southern Peruvian Andes (SPA), especially for agriculture, which is mainly rain fed and one of the main income sources in the region. Therefore, knowledge and predictions of the rainy season such as its onset and ending are crucial for planning purposes. However, such information is curr...

The near‐surface zero degree line (ZDL) is a key isotherm in mountain regions worldwide, but a detailed analysis of methods for the ZDL determination, their properties and applicability in a changing climate is missing. We here test different approaches to determine the near‐surface ZDL on a monthly scale in the Swiss Alps. A non‐linear profile yie...

The development and dissemination of weather and climate information is crucial to improve people’s resilience and adaptability to climate variability and change. The impacts of climate variability and change are generally stronger for disadvantaged population groups due to their limited adaptive and coping capacities. For instance, smallholder fa...

In the southern Peruvian Andes, communities are highly dependent on climatic conditions due to the mainly rain‐fed agriculture and the importance of glaciers and snow melt as a freshwater resource. Longer‐term trends and year‐to‐year variability of precipitation or temperature severely affect living conditions. This study evaluates seasonal precipi...

Seasonal predictions have a great socio-economic potential if they are reliable and skillful. In this study, we assess the prediction performance of SEAS5, version 5 of the seasonal prediction system of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), over South America against homogenized station data. For temperature, we find highe...

Precipitation deficits remain a concern to the rural population in the southern Peruvian highlands and knowledge about their occurrence is lacking because of scarce data availability. For mountainous regions with sparse station networks, reanalyses can provide valuable information; however, known limitations in reproducing precipitation are aggrava...

As a result of exceptional high pressure, the 2018 summer half-year was unusually hot and sunny in large parts of Central and Northern Europe, and in many places also extremely dry. In Switzerland, the summer half-year was also marked by persistent warmth and severe drought. The nationwide average temperature over the months of April to September 2...

Relative homogenization methods assume that measurements of nearby stations experience similar climate signals and rely therefore on dense station networks with high‐temporal correlations. In developing countries such as Peru, however, networks often suffer from low‐station density. The aim of this study is to quantify the influence of network dens...

In situ climatological observations are essential for studies related to climate trends and extreme events. However, in many regions of the globe, observational records are affected by a large number of data quality issues. Assessing and controlling the quality of such datasets is an important, often overlooked aspect of climate research. Besides a...

CLIMANDES is a pilot twinning project between the National Weather Services of Peru and Switzerland (SENAMHI and MeteoSwiss), developed within the Global Framework for Climate Services of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Split in two modules, CLIMANDES aims at improving education in meteorology and climatology in support of the WMO Regi...

Glacier surface mass-balance measurements on Greenland started more than a century ago, but no compilation exists of the observations from the ablation area of the ice sheet and local glaciers. Such data could be used in the evaluation of modelled surface mass balance, or to document changes in glacier melt independently from model output. Here, we...

In recent years, strong variations in the speed of rock glaciers have been detected, raising questions about their stability under changing climatic conditions. In this study, we present continuous time series of surface velocities over 3 years of six GPS stations located on three rock glaciers in Switzerland. Intra-annual velocity variations are a...

In recent years, strong variations in the speed of rock glaciers have been detected, raising questions about their stability under changing climatic conditions. In this study, we present continuous time series of surface velocities over 3 years of six GPS stations located on three rock glaciers in Switzerland. Intra-annual velocity variations are a...

Detecting and monitoring of moving and potentially hazardous slopes requires reliable estimations of velocities. Separating any movement signal from measurement noise is crucial for understanding the temporal variability of slope movements and detecting changes in the movement regime, which may be important indicators of the process. Thus, methods...

Knowledge of processes and factors affecting slope instability is essential for detecting and monitoring potentially hazardous slopes. Knowing the timing of acceleration or deceleration of slope movements can help to identify important controls and hence to increase our process understanding. For this methods to derive reliable velocity estimations...

Detecting and monitoring of moving and poten- tially hazardous slopes requires reliable estimations of ve- locities. Separating any movement signal from measurement noise is crucial for understanding the temporal variability of slope movements and detecting changes in the movement regime, which may be important indicators of the process. Thus, meth...

Model evaluation is often performed at few locations due to the lack of spatially distributed data. Since the quantification of model sensitivities and uncertainties can be performed independently from ground truth measurements, these analyses are suitable to test the influence of environmental variability on model evaluation. In this study, the se...

Before operational use or for decision making, models must be validated, and the degree of trust in model outputs should be quantified. Often, model validation is performed at single locations due to the lack of spatially-distributed data. Since the analysis of parametric model uncertainties can be performed independently of observations, it is a s...

Seasonal snow cover and its melt regime are heterogeneous both in time and space. Describing and modelling this variability is important because it affects diverse phenomena such as runoff, ground temperatures or slope movements. This study presents the derivation of melting characteristics based on spatial clusters of ground surface temperature (G...

As many environmental models rely on simulating the energy balance at the Earth’s surface based on parameterized radiative fluxes, knowledge of the inherent model uncertainties is important. In this study we evaluate one parameterization of clear-sky direct, diffuse and global shortwave downward radiation (SDR) and diverse parameterizations of clea...

The seasonal snow cover and its melting are heterogeneous both in space and time. Describing and modelling this variability are important because it affects divers phenomena such as runoff, ground temperatures or slope movements. This study investigates the derivation of melting characteristics based on spatial clusters of temperature measurements....

As many environmental models rely on simulating the energy balance at the Earth's surface based on parameterized radiative fluxes, knowledge of the inherent uncertainties is important. In this study we evaluate one parameterization of clear-sky incoming shortwave radiation (SDR) and diverse parameterizations of clear-sky and all-sky incoming longwa...

Measurements of environmental variables are often used to validate and calibrate physically-based models. Depending on their application, the models are used at different scales, ranging from few meters to tens of kilometers. Environmental variables can vary strongly within the grid cells of these models. Validating a model with a single measuremen...

Measurements of environmental variables are often used to validate and calibrate physically-based models. Depending on their application, models are used at different scales, ranging from few meters to tens of kilometers. Environmental variables can vary strongly within the grid cells of these models. Validating a model with a single measurement is...

GEOtop is a hydrological model having coupled heat and water flow equations for the column encompassing both snow and soil. It is thus able to describe the thermal interactions between snow and soil, which is particularly interesting in cold mountain areas where soil freezing and permafrost affect many environmental phenomena and exhibit strong lat...

Commercial, coin-sized iButton temperature logger devices are well-suited for densely instrumenting large outdoor areas. An efficient workflow for deploying and maintaining those devices is necessary when striving to deploy and operate several hundreds of data logger devices. Additionally, a sophisticated data management is required for handling th...

Mountain areas are characterized by extreme variability in elevation, exposure to solar radiation and ground material. Many physical processes, that control ground temperatures and thereby permafrost, are highly affected by this variability. An improved understanding of permafrost and related processes in mountain areas therefore requires investiga...

Model validation is an integral part of any computational simulation, including that of permafrost and related processes. One of the key factors in permafrost modeling is energy balance and heat transfer at the Earth's surface. In order to obtain valuable information on ground temperature, rigorous validation of the energy balance is necessary. We...

The PermaSense project, a joint computer science and geoscience project, investigates the influence of climate change on permafrost and specifically the stability of steep rock walls in alpine regions and future natural hazard scenarios due to global warming. Current practice only allows to make observations in the mountain cryosphere using limited...

ORCID Reference type: [bibtex]; ORCID Reference: [@article { beutel2009,title = {The PermaSense remote monitoring infrastructure},journal = {ISSW 09 - International Snow Science Workshop, Proceedings},year = {2009},pages = {187-191},author = {Beutel, J. and Gruber, S. and Gubler, S. and Hasler, A. and Keller, M. and Lim, R. and Talzi, I. and Thiele...