---
_id: '14487'
abstract:
- lang: eng
  text: High Mountain Asia (HMA) is among the most vulnerable water towers globally
    and yet future projections of water availability in and from its high-mountain
    catchments remain uncertain, as their hydrologic response to ongoing environmental
    changes is complex. Mechanistic modeling approaches incorporating cryospheric,
    hydrological, and vegetation processes in high spatial, temporal, and physical
    detail have never been applied for high-elevation catchments of HMA. We use a
    land surface model at high spatial and temporal resolution (100 m and hourly)
    to simulate the coupled dynamics of energy, water, and vegetation for the 350
    km2 Langtang catchment (Nepal). We compare our model outputs for one hydrological
    year against a large set of observations to gain insight into the partitioning
    of the water balance at the subseasonal scale and across elevation bands. During
    the simulated hydrological year, we find that evapotranspiration is a key component
    of the total water balance, as it causes about the equivalent of 20% of all the
    available precipitation or 154% of the water production from glacier melt in the
    basin to return directly to the atmosphere. The depletion of the cryospheric water
    budget is dominated by snow melt, but at high elevations is primarily dictated
    by snow and ice sublimation. Snow sublimation is the dominant vapor flux (49%)
    at the catchment scale, accounting for the equivalent of 11% of snowfall, 17%
    of snowmelt, and 75% of ice melt, respectively. We conclude that simulations should
    consider sublimation and other evaporative fluxes explicitly, as otherwise water
    balance estimates can be ill-quantified.
acknowledgement: This project has received funding from the JSPS-SNSF (Japan Society
  for the Promotion of Science and Swiss National Science Foundation) Bilateral Programmes
  project (HOPE, High-ele-vation precipitation in High Mountain Asia; Grant 183633),
  and the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020
  research and innovation program (RAVEN, Rapid mass losses of debris-covered glaciers
  in High Mountain Asia; Grant 772751). We want to thank in particular T. Gurung,
  S. Joshi, J. Shea, W. Immerzeel, and others involved, as well as ICIMOD, for their
  efforts over the past years in observing the meteorology of the Langtang catchment,
  collecting and organizing the data and making them publicly available. We also thank
  the National Geographic Society (Grant NGS-61784R-19) and the Mount Everest Foundation
  (reference 19-24) for providing fieldwork funding for C. L. Fyffe. We thank T. Kramer
  for help with the WSL Hyperion cluster. We are grate-ful for comments by three anonymous
  reviewers and the Associate Editor, who greatly helped to improve the manuscript
  further. Open access funding provided by ETH-Bereich Forschungsanstalten.
article_number: e2022WR033841
article_processing_charge: Yes (via OA deal)
article_type: original
author:
- first_name: Pascal
  full_name: Buri, Pascal
  last_name: Buri
- first_name: Simone
  full_name: Fatichi, Simone
  last_name: Fatichi
- first_name: Thomas
  full_name: Shaw, Thomas
  id: 3caa3f91-1f03-11ee-96ce-e0e553054d6e
  last_name: Shaw
  orcid: 0000-0001-7640-6152
- first_name: Evan S.
  full_name: Miles, Evan S.
  last_name: Miles
- first_name: Michael
  full_name: Mccarthy, Michael
  id: 22a2674a-61ce-11ee-94b5-d18813baf16f
  last_name: Mccarthy
- first_name: Catriona Louise
  full_name: Fyffe, Catriona Louise
  id: 001b0422-8d15-11ed-bc51-cab6c037a228
  last_name: Fyffe
- first_name: Stefan
  full_name: Fugger, Stefan
  last_name: Fugger
- first_name: Shaoting
  full_name: Ren, Shaoting
  last_name: Ren
- first_name: Marin
  full_name: Kneib, Marin
  last_name: Kneib
- first_name: Achille
  full_name: Jouberton, Achille
  last_name: Jouberton
- first_name: Jakob
  full_name: Steiner, Jakob
  last_name: Steiner
- first_name: Koji
  full_name: Fujita, Koji
  last_name: Fujita
- first_name: Francesca
  full_name: Pellicciotti, Francesca
  id: b28f055a-81ea-11ed-b70c-a9fe7f7b0e70
  last_name: Pellicciotti
  orcid: 0000-0002-5554-8087
citation:
  ama: 'Buri P, Fatichi S, Shaw T, et al. Land surface modeling in the Himalayas:
    On the importance of evaporative fluxes for the water balance of a high-elevation
    catchment. <i>Water Resources Research</i>. 2023;59(10). doi:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1029/2022WR033841">10.1029/2022WR033841</a>'
  apa: 'Buri, P., Fatichi, S., Shaw, T., Miles, E. S., McCarthy, M., Fyffe, C. L.,
    … Pellicciotti, F. (2023). Land surface modeling in the Himalayas: On the importance
    of evaporative fluxes for the water balance of a high-elevation catchment. <i>Water
    Resources Research</i>. Wiley. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1029/2022WR033841">https://doi.org/10.1029/2022WR033841</a>'
  chicago: 'Buri, Pascal, Simone Fatichi, Thomas Shaw, Evan S. Miles, Michael McCarthy,
    Catriona Louise Fyffe, Stefan Fugger, et al. “Land Surface Modeling in the Himalayas:
    On the Importance of Evaporative Fluxes for the Water Balance of a High-Elevation
    Catchment.” <i>Water Resources Research</i>. Wiley, 2023. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1029/2022WR033841">https://doi.org/10.1029/2022WR033841</a>.'
  ieee: 'P. Buri <i>et al.</i>, “Land surface modeling in the Himalayas: On the importance
    of evaporative fluxes for the water balance of a high-elevation catchment,” <i>Water
    Resources Research</i>, vol. 59, no. 10. Wiley, 2023.'
  ista: 'Buri P, Fatichi S, Shaw T, Miles ES, McCarthy M, Fyffe CL, Fugger S, Ren
    S, Kneib M, Jouberton A, Steiner J, Fujita K, Pellicciotti F. 2023. Land surface
    modeling in the Himalayas: On the importance of evaporative fluxes for the water
    balance of a high-elevation catchment. Water Resources Research. 59(10), e2022WR033841.'
  mla: 'Buri, Pascal, et al. “Land Surface Modeling in the Himalayas: On the Importance
    of Evaporative Fluxes for the Water Balance of a High-Elevation Catchment.” <i>Water
    Resources Research</i>, vol. 59, no. 10, e2022WR033841, Wiley, 2023, doi:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1029/2022WR033841">10.1029/2022WR033841</a>.'
  short: P. Buri, S. Fatichi, T. Shaw, E.S. Miles, M. McCarthy, C.L. Fyffe, S. Fugger,
    S. Ren, M. Kneib, A. Jouberton, J. Steiner, K. Fujita, F. Pellicciotti, Water
    Resources Research 59 (2023).
date_created: 2023-11-05T23:00:53Z
date_published: 2023-10-25T00:00:00Z
date_updated: 2025-09-09T13:15:40Z
day: '25'
ddc:
- '550'
department:
- _id: FrPe
doi: 10.1029/2022WR033841
external_id:
  isi:
  - '001091989600005'
file:
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  date_updated: 2023-11-07T08:10:44Z
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intvolume: '        59'
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issue: '10'
language:
- iso: eng
month: '10'
oa: 1
oa_version: Published Version
publication: Water Resources Research
publication_identifier:
  eissn:
  - 1944-7973
  issn:
  - 0043-1397
publication_status: published
publisher: Wiley
quality_controlled: '1'
related_material:
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    relation: research_data
    status: public
scopus_import: '1'
status: public
title: 'Land surface modeling in the Himalayas: On the importance of evaporative fluxes
  for the water balance of a high-elevation catchment'
tmp:
  image: /images/cc_by_nc_nd.png
  legal_code_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode
  name: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
    (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
  short: CC BY-NC-ND (4.0)
type: journal_article
user_id: 317138e5-6ab7-11ef-aa6d-ffef3953e345
volume: 59
year: '2023'
...