Fyffe, C.L. orcid.org/0000-0001-6950-3501, Potter, E. orcid.org/0000-0001-5273-1292, Miles, E. orcid.org/0000-0001-5446-8571 et al. (12 more authors) (2025) Thin and ephemeral snow shapes melt and runoff dynamics in the Peruvian Andes. Communications Earth & Environment, 6 (1). 434. ISSN 2662-4435
Abstract
The snow and glaciers of the Peruvian Andes provide vital water supplies in a region facing water scarcity and substantial glacier change. However, there remains a lack of understanding of snow processes and quantification of the contribution of melt to runoff. Here we apply a distributed glacio-hydrological model over the Rio Santa basin to disentangle the role of the cryosphere in the Andean water cycle. Only at the highest elevations (>5000 m a.s.l.) is the snow cover continuous; at lower elevations, the snowpack is thin and ephemeral, with rapid cycles of snowfall and melt. Due to the large catchment area affected by ephemeral snow, its contribution to catchment inputs is substantial (23% and 38% in the wet and dry season, respectively). Ice melt is crucial in the mid-dry season (up to 44% of inputs). Our results improve estimates of water fluxes and call for further process-based modelling across the Andes.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Climate change; Cryospheric science; Hydrology |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > School of Geography and Planning |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 09 Jun 2025 15:25 |
Last Modified: | 09 Jun 2025 15:25 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s43247-025-02379-x |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:227617 |