https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2019-233 Preprint. Discussion started: 5 November 2019 c Author(s) 2019. CC BY 4.0 License. Glacier runoff variations since 1955 in the Maipo River Basin, semiarid Andes of central Chile Álvaro Ayala1,2, David Farías-Barahona3, Matthias Huss1,2,4, Francesca Pellicciotti2,5, James McPhee6,7, Daniel Farinotti1,2 5 1Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology (VAW), ETH Zurich, Zurich, 8093, Switzerland. 2Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, Birmensdorf, 8903, Switzerland. 3Institut für Geographie, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, 91058, Germany 4Department of Geosciences, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, 1700, Switzerland 5Department of Geography, Northumbria University, Newcastle, NE1 8ST, UK. 10 6Department of Civil Engineering, University of Chile, Santiago, 8370449, Chile. 7Advanced Mining Technology Centre (AMTC), University of Chile, Santiago, 8370451, Chile. Correspondence to: Alvaro Ayala (
[email protected]), now at Centre for Advanced Studies in Arid Zones (CEAZA) Abstract (max 250 words). As glaciers adjust their size in response to climate variations, long-term changes in meltwater production can be expected, affecting the local availability of water resources. We investigate glacier runoff in the period 15 1955-2016 in the Maipo River Basin (4 843 km2), semiarid Andes of Chile. The basin contains more than 800 glaciers covering 378 km2 (inventoried in 2000). We model the mass balance and runoff contribution of 26 glaciers with the physically-oriented and fully-distributed TOPKAPI-ETH glacio-hydrological model, and extrapolate the results to the entire basin. TOPKAPI- ETH is run using several glaciological and meteorological datasets, and its results are evaluated against streamflow records, remotely-sensed snow cover and geodetic mass balances for the periods 1955-2000 and 2000-2013.