Comment on "Sensitivity of glaciation in the arid subtropical Andes to changes in temperature, precipitation, and solar radiation" by Vargo et al. (2018)

MATEO MARTINI; ASTINI, RICARDO

GLOBAL AND PLANETARY CHANGE

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2019

0921-8181

Vargo et al. (2018) used idealized model experiments to test thesensitivity of glaciation to changes in temperature, precipitation andshortwave radiation in the Western Cordillera, the Altiplano and the CordilleraOriental (Eastern Cordillera) in the arid subtropical Andes. We point out thatthe application to Cordillera Oriental does not consider precipitation at the appropriatespatial scale, because precipitation gradients are steep in the area. Usinghigh-resolution datasets we found that precipitation in the Cordillera Orientalis significantly lower than that considered as input in the model, and similarto the value used for the Western Cordillera. Considering more realisticprecipitation data for the Cordillera Oriental would produce similar results tothose from the Western Cordillera. Adequate parametric and scale inputsreinforce the importance of Vargo et al. (2018) modeling in order to predictglacial sensitivity to climate changes.