Changes in Surface Mass Balance on the Devon Ice Cap in the Canadian Arctic

Abstract: Climate change is an ongoing process that contributes to changes in the climate on a global scale down to a local scale. The Arctic sea ice and the glaciers have continued to decrease at the same time as the rate of sea level rise has increased. Ice caps are vulnerable to the climate change, because they are located adjacent to the Greenland ice sheet and near coastal areas in the Arctic. In the present work, the surface mass balance is analyzed at the Devon Ice Cap that is located in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The difference between the surface mass balance for different time periods within the period 1980-2014 are studied as well as some of the surface mass balance components. The high resolution climate model HIRHAM5 is used to evaluate both the precipitation at the shallow ice cores and the temperature of the automatic weather stations with the observations at the Devon Ice Cap. It is shown that the Devon Ice Cap is well represented in the runs that is driven with HIRHAM5. It is also shown that the precipitation and the snowmelt has an increasing trend, while the surface mass balance has a decreasing trend.