Kabatic flows over ice sheets and glaciers

During the Climate Conference 2001, which was held in August 2001 at Utrecht University, the Netherlands, a workshop was devoted to katabatic flows over glaciers and ice sheets. In this issue of Tellus a number of papers presented at this workshop have been brought together. In recent years the mass balance of glaciers and ice sheets and its sensitivity to climate change has received considerable attention. The exchange of mass, momentum and sensible heat between the glacier surface and atmosphere is determined by turbulence in the lower atmospheric layers. Extensive field experiments have shown that persistent katabatic flow dominates the dynamics of the lower atmosphere over ice sheets and glaciers. Even over such exposed glaciers like Vatnajökull, Iceland, katabatic flow prevails most of the time.