Comment on "100-year mass changes in the Swiss Alps linked to the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation" by Matthias Huss et al. (2010)

Abstract. The paper by Huss et al. (2010) presents a comprehensive set of 100-year specific mass balance series for 30 Swiss glaciers. In the second part of the paper, the authors relate the fluctuations in alpine glacier specific mass balance to climatic changes attributed to the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). We believe that the specific mass balance is not the appropriate measure to interpret climatic fluctuations. Due to the dynamic response of glaciers to changes in their climatic forcing, the importance of short-term climatic oscillations is overestimated. Taking the changes in glacier geometry into account, the AMO related climate variations are far less important to the recent mass loss than the trend caused by the gradual warming over the past century.