Application of kriging interpolation for glacier mass balance computations

In order to compute the specific mass balance of a glacier, point measurements of mass balance need to be integrated and thus interpolated over the entire glacier. In this study kriging was applied as interpolation technique to mass balance data of Storglaciaren, a 3 km(2) valley glacier, focusing on the sensitivity of results to the choice of some kriging parameters. Although the spacial means varied only little in most cases, the spatial distribution of the mass balance quantities was sensitive to the assumption on kriging parameters, suggesting that the kriging parameters need to be carefully optimized for each case if the spatial distribution is of interest.