Surface elevation changes of the tropical glaciers throughout Peru between 2000 and 2016 ...

• Main Authors: Seehaus, Thorsten, Malz, Philipp, Sommer, Christian, Braun, Matthias Holger
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA 2019
• Subjects: DEM; elevation change; geodetic mass balance; SRTM; TanDEM-X; tropical glacier; File name; File format; File size; Uniform resource locator/link to file; Multiple investigations; Priority Programme 1158 Antarctic Research with Comparable Investigations in Arctic Sea Ice Areas SPP1158; Antarctic; Arctic; Antarc*; Climate change; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.1594/pangaea.906211; https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.906211

Glaciers in tropical regions are very sensitive to climatic variations and thus strongly affected by climate change. The majority of the tropical glaciers worldwide are located in the Peruvian Andes, which have shown significant ice loss in the last century. Here, we present the first multi-temporal, region-wide survey of geodetic mass balances throughout Peru covering the period 2000-2016. Using interferometric satellite SAR acquisitions, bi-temporal geodetic mass balances are derived. An average specific mass balance of -296±41 kg m-2 a-1 is found throughout Peru for the period 2000-2016. However, there are strong regional and temporal differences in the mass budgets ranging from 45±97 kg m-2 a-1 to -752±452 kg m-2 a-1. The ice loss increased towards the end of the observation period. Between 2013 and 2016, the average mass budget amounts to -660±178 kg m-2 a-1. The glacier changes revealed can be attributed to changes in the climatic settings in the study region, derived from ERA-Interim reanalysis data ... : This work was financially supported by the DLR/BMWi grant GEKKO (50EE1544), by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) in the framework of the priority programme "Antarctic Research with comparative investigations in Arctic ice areas" SPP 1158 by the grant DFG BR2105/9-1 and the priority programme “Regional Sea Level Change and Society” by the grant DFG BR2105/14-1, as well as the HGF Aliance Remote Sensing & Earth System Dynamics. The authors would like to thank the German Aerospace Center for providing TanDEM-X and TerraSAR-X data free of charge under AO XTI_GLAC0264 and AO ARC_HYD1763. Landsat data were kindly provided via USGS Earth Explorer and Sentinel-1 data were provided by ESA via Copernicus Open Access Hub. SRTM data were provided by NASA LP DAAC ...