New eyes in the sky measure glaciers and ice sheets

Abstract

The mapping and measurement of glaciers and their changes are useful in predicting sea‐level and regional water supply, studying hazards and climate change [Haeberli et al., 1998],and in the hydropower industry Existing inventories cover only about 67,000 of the world's estimated 160,000 glaciers and are based on data collected over 50 years or more [e.g.,Haeberli et al., 1998]. The data available have proven that small ice bodies are disappearing at an accelerating rate and that the Antarctic ice sheet and its fringing ice shelves are undergoing unexpected, rapid change. According to many glaciologists, much larger fluctuations in land ice—with vast implications for society—are possible in the coming decades and centuries due to natural and anthropogenic climate change [Oppenheimer, 1998].

Rapid disintegration of Alpine glaciers observed with satellite data

“…[10] The acceleration of glacier retreat has also been proven by a comparison of the decadal area change for the period 1850-1973[Maisch et al, 2000 with 1973 -1998 (cf. Table 2): In total the area change has increased by a factor of three for the latter period, whereas it is about a factor of seven for the period 1985 -1998.…”

“…One way to obtain data for a global glacier inventory is the use of multispectral Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data, which are available since 1982 at 30 m spatial resolution and have widely been used for automated glacier mapping [Aniya et al, 1996;Jacobs et al, 1997]. The required international cooperation for a long term program of spaceborne glacier monitoring was recently initiated by the project Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) [Kieffer et al, 2000;Bishop et al, 2004].…”

Late‐twentieth century changes in glacier extent in the Ak‐shirak Range, Central Asia, determined from historical data and ASTER imagery

“…The Global Land Ice Measurement from Space (GLIMS) project is using these and other imagery and field survey data to map many of the world's glacierized areas and to assess changes in ice extent [Williams and Ferrigno, 1993;Kieffer et al 2000]. Raup et al [2000] detail the procedures developed for acquiring images (Data Acquisition Requests or DARs) and establishing an ARC/INFO database of land ice.…”

Using dynamic modelling to simulate the distribution of rockglaciers

“…(b) A number of approaches are available to estimate the extent of debris accumulations, for example, from air-or space-borne remote sensing (e.g. Bishop et al, 1999;Kieffer et al, 2000;Taschner and Ranzi, 2002;Paul, 2003). Literature on the estimation of debris accumulation thickness, in contrast, is generally sparse.…”