LAUSR

Funding information BG acknowledges Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) grant number: I 3841-N32; IS acknowledges FWF grant number: T781-N32; TS acknowledges the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) grant number: SA 2339/7-1; The mass balance of mountain glaciers is of interest for several applications (local hydrology or climate projections), and turbulent fluxes can be an important contributor to glacier surface mass balance during strong melting events. The underlying complex terrain leads to spatial heterogeneity and non-stationarity of turbulent fluxes. Due to the contribution of thermally-induced flows and gravity waves, exchange mechanisms are fully three-dimensional, instead of only vertical. Additionally, glaciers have their own distinct microclimate, governed by a down-glacier katabatic wind, which protects the glacier ice and interacts with the surrounding flows onmultiple scales. In this study, we perform large-eddy simulationswith theWRFmodelwith∆x = 48m to gain insight on the boundary-layer processes over an Alpine valley glacier, the Hintereisferner (HEF). We choose two case studies from a measurement campaign (August 2018) with different synoptic wind directions (South-West and North-West). Model evaluation with an array of eddycovariance stations on the glacier tongue and surroundings reveals thatWRF is able to simulate the general glacier boundary-