Detecting short-term surface melt over Vestre Broggerbreen, Arctic glacier using indigenously developed unmanned air vehicles

• Published in: Geocarto International
• Main Authors: M. Geetha Priya, Krishna Venkatesh, Lohit Shivanna, Suresh Devaraj
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2022
• Subjects: surface melt; uav; glacier; polar; global warming; snow; Physical geography; GB3-5030; Arctic; Svalbard; Global warming
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1080/10106049.2020.1849416; https://doaj.org/article/03c9bcaf0d3a438fa1562ed59cb73a5a

In the Arctic, the impacts of global warming are strong and the rate of ice melting is increasingly accelerating due to warmer temperatures relative to snow accumulation. With recent advances in unmanned air vehicle (UAV) technology and image processing techniques, field measurements for cryosphere studies have gained significance today. In the current report, an attempt is being made to measure glacier surface melt over a four-day period using UAV acquisitions and field measurements to improve India's scientific credentials in polar science. Two aerial surveys were performed on 14 and 17 September 2019 using an indigenous Quadcopter UAV over a portion of the Ablation area of Vestre Broggerbreen glacier, Svalbard, Arctic. To measure precise surface melt, surface topography reconstructed from the acquired aerial images is processed. Results concluded that a surface melt was observed ranging from 0.013 to 0.065 m, which agreed with the measurements in situ.