Journal of Glaciology On the disequilibrium response and climate change vulnerability of the mass-balance glaciers in the Alps Article Luca Carturan1,2, Philipp Rastner3 and Frank Paul3 Cite this article: Carturan L, Rastner P, Paul F 1Department of Land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry, University of Padova, Viale dell’Università 16, 35020, (2020). On the disequilibrium response and Legnaro, Padova, Italy; 2Department of Geosciences, University of Padova, Via Gradenigo 6, 35131, Padova, Italy climate change vulnerability of the mass- and 3Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstr. 190, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland balance glaciers in the Alps. Journal of Glaciology 66(260), 1034–1050. https://doi.org/ 10.1017/jog.2020.71 Abstract Received: 21 December 2019 Glaciers in the Alps and several other regions in the world have experienced strong negative mass Revised: 28 July 2020 balances over the past few decades. Some of them are disappearing, undergoing exceptionally Accepted: 31 July 2020 negative mass balances that impact the mean regional value, and require replacement. In this First published online: 9 September 2020 study, we analyse the geomorphometric characteristics of 46 mass-balance glaciers in the Alps Key words: and the long-term mass-balance time series for a subset of nine reference glaciers. We identify climate change; glacier mass balance; glacier regime shifts in the mass-balance time series (when non-climatic controls started impacting) monitoring; mountain glaciers and develop a glacier vulnerability index (GVI) as a proxy for their possible future development, based on criteria such as hypsometric index, breaks in slope, thickness distribution and elevation Author for correspondence: Luca Carturan, E-mail:
[email protected] change pattern.