Regional Mountain Conference

Current climatic changes strongly affect snow-hydrological processes in high mountain areas. Diminishing snowpacks, retreating glaciers and increasing evapotranspiration rates are among the discussed changes. In this study, we aim to quantify the water balance components of the Ötztal for the 30-year period 1994-2023. The Ötztal is a 65 km long Alpine valley located in Tyrol, Austria. Numerous large glaciers still reside in the highest elevations in the back of the valley. We conduct fully distributed snow-hydrological model simulations using the open source mountain snow-hydrological model openAMUNDSEN. Meteorological observations from the station networks of GeoSphere Austria, the Hydrographic and the Avalanche Warning Services of Tyrol, the Tyrolean Wasserkraft AG (TIWAG) and the University of Innsbruck are used as input. We analyze the simulation results for rainfall, snowfall, snowmelt, snow sublimation, glacier melt, runoff and evapotranspiration. The spatio-temporal assessment of these variables enables us to quantify the current state of the water balance in the Ötztal.