Das Projekt "CRYOSUB: Mountain Cryosphere Subgrid Parameterization and Computation" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Universität Zürich, Geographisches Institut durchgeführt. The expected outcome of this project is a method that allows for continental-scale modeling of permafrost, snow and glacier mass balance in mountain areas under present and simulated future climate. This is important because the mountain cryosphere influences a large proportion of the global land mass and population, experiences high rates of climate change and is currently inadequately resolved in regional climate models do to the dominating influence of sub-grid variability. This project does not address climate modelling but will rather provide a proof of concept for the inclusion of topography sub-grid schemes into climate models where it has the potential to improve the modeling of radiative and moisture fluxes over mountain topography. The research proposed here focuses on a one-way coupling, i.e. a scheme in which results from regional models are used but the results of the surface calculation do not feed back into the original model. This allows a thorough and realistic development and evaluation of the method with measured as well as simulated climate data as well as first applications worldwide. At the same time it provides a proof of concept for a later two-way or online coupling where this approach could be included in regional climate models.