Debris cover significantly influences glacier melt rates, but our knowledge of debris physical properties, their variability and their effects on ablation is limited. In-situ measurements on debris-covered glaciers are relatively sparse and therefore literature values are often used in modelling studies. To address this issue, we have compiled DebDab, a database of debris cover properties that includes debris thickness, bulk thermal conductivity, surface roughness, albedo, emissivity, porosity and measured subseasonal melt rates from published literature and datasets. The first version contains debris thickness measurements for 73 glaciers, over 7000 individual debris thickness measurements and more than 1700 melt rate measurements. The other properties have more than 400 entries of which only 45% are actual measurements.DebDab is openly available as a community resource and will continue to develop in the coming years, and we welcome community contributions of their measurements of debris thickness and properties. We hope that it will be useful for physical parameter probability distributions, model uncertainty assessments, and as validation data for debris thickness estimation and melt modelling. To demonstrate its utility, we used DebDab to explore the sensitivity of point scale melt simulations to debris properties variability, and in particular to investigate (1) the effect of changing debris thickness on each debris property; (2) the relationship between debris properties; and (3) whether these relationships are the same for different climatic regions worldwide.

The 28th IUGG General Assembly (IUGG2023) (Berlin 2023)