Modelling alpine glacier geometry and subglacial erosion patterns in response to contrasting climatic forcing

Climate exerts a primary control on glacier mass balance, driving changes in ice flux, which affects basal sliding and subglacial erosion. Although past reconstructions have been widely used as paleo-climate proxies, extracting quantitative temperature/precipitation data from paleo-glaciers is still challenging. The iSOSIA model was over synthetic landscape to quantitatively investigate the non-linear dependence of geometry dynamics climate forcing, well analyse how spatial patterns erosion rates vary between accumulation ablation zones for different climatic settings. We performed 10 calibrated scenarios with combinations temperature precipitation rate two separate sets simulations [maintaining either same equilibrium line altitude (ELA) or extent; SA ST, respectively]. Our results reinforce role importance flux conditioning geometry. In simulations, contrasting showed major influence length thickness. ST ELAs presented variability 300 m order maintain similar extent, but reduced These highlight predict geometry, when compared overall balance an ELA estimate. Subglacial abrasion quarrying notable differences varying multimodal distributions increased precipitation/temperature, shifting towards higher-elevation tributaries connecting patches zone. Such trends hydrology ice-bed contact (cavitation) dictating erosion, while depth relates closely inputs. potential implications based provide insights can help estimate paleo-climatic conditions paleo-glacial records.