Elevation Changes of West-Central Greenland Glaciers From 1985 to 2012 From Remote Sensing
Greenlandic glaciers distinct from the ice sheet make up 12% of the global glacierized area and store about 10% of the global glacier ice volume (Farinotti et al., 2019). However, knowledge about recent climate change-induced volume changes of these 19,000 individual glaciers is limited. The small n...
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ftoslouniv:oai:www.duo.uio.no:10852/84041 2023-05-15T16:21:03+02:00 Elevation Changes of West-Central Greenland Glaciers From 1985 to 2012 From Remote Sensing Huber, Jacqueline McNabb, Robert Whitfield Zemp, Michael 2021-02-03T13:09:59Z http://hdl.handle.net/10852/84041 http://urn.nb.no/URN:NBN:no-86774 https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2020.00035 EN eng http://urn.nb.no/URN:NBN:no-86774 Huber, Jacqueline McNabb, Robert Whitfield Zemp, Michael . Elevation Changes of West-Central Greenland Glaciers From 1985 to 2012 From Remote Sensing. Frontiers in Earth Science. 2020, 8 http://hdl.handle.net/10852/84041 1886313 info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.jtitle=Frontiers in Earth Science&rft.volume=8&rft.spage=&rft.date=2020 Frontiers in Earth Science 8 0 https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2020.00035 URN:NBN:no-86774 Fulltext https://www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/10852/84041/2/feart-08-00035.pdf Attribution 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ CC-BY 2296-6463 Journal article Tidsskriftartikkel Peer reviewed PublishedVersion 2021 ftoslouniv https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2020.00035 2021-03-17T23:31:02Z Greenlandic glaciers distinct from the ice sheet make up 12% of the global glacierized area and store about 10% of the global glacier ice volume (Farinotti et al., 2019). However, knowledge about recent climate change-induced volume changes of these 19,000 individual glaciers is limited. The small number of available glaciological and geodetic mass-balance observations have a limited spatial coverage, and the representativeness of these measurements for the region is largely unknown, factors which make a regional assessment of mass balance challenging. Here we use two recently released digital elevation models (DEMs) to assess glacier-wide elevation changes of 1,526 glaciers covering 3,785 km2 in west-central Greenland: The historical AeroDEM representing the surface in 1985 and a TanDEM-X composite representing 2010–2014. The results show that on average glacier surfaces lowered by about 14.0 ± 4.6 m from 1985 until 2012 or 0.5 ± 0.2 m yr−1, which is equivalent to a sample mass loss of ~45.1 ± 14.9 Gt in total or 1.7 ± 0.6 Gt yr−1. Challenges arise from the nature of the DEMs, such as large areas of data voids, fuzzy acquisition dates, and potential radar penetration. We compared several different interpolation methods to assess the best method to fill data voids and constrain unknown survey dates and the associated uncertainties with each method. The potential radar penetration is considered negligible for this assessment in view of the overall glacier changes, the length of the observation period, and the overall uncertainties. A comparison with earlier studies indicates that for glacier change assessments based on ICESat, data selection and averaging methodology strongly influences the results from these spatially limited measurements. This study promotes improved assessments of the contribution of glaciers to sea-level rise and encourages to extend geodetic glacier mass balances to all glaciers on Greenland. Article in Journal/Newspaper glacier Greenland greenlandic Ice Sheet Universitet i Oslo: Digitale utgivelser ved UiO (DUO) Geodetic Glacier ENVELOPE(163.800,163.800,-77.750,-77.750) Greenland Frontiers in Earth Science 8 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Universitet i Oslo: Digitale utgivelser ved UiO (DUO) |
op_collection_id |
ftoslouniv |
language |
English |
description |
Greenlandic glaciers distinct from the ice sheet make up 12% of the global glacierized area and store about 10% of the global glacier ice volume (Farinotti et al., 2019). However, knowledge about recent climate change-induced volume changes of these 19,000 individual glaciers is limited. The small number of available glaciological and geodetic mass-balance observations have a limited spatial coverage, and the representativeness of these measurements for the region is largely unknown, factors which make a regional assessment of mass balance challenging. Here we use two recently released digital elevation models (DEMs) to assess glacier-wide elevation changes of 1,526 glaciers covering 3,785 km2 in west-central Greenland: The historical AeroDEM representing the surface in 1985 and a TanDEM-X composite representing 2010–2014. The results show that on average glacier surfaces lowered by about 14.0 ± 4.6 m from 1985 until 2012 or 0.5 ± 0.2 m yr−1, which is equivalent to a sample mass loss of ~45.1 ± 14.9 Gt in total or 1.7 ± 0.6 Gt yr−1. Challenges arise from the nature of the DEMs, such as large areas of data voids, fuzzy acquisition dates, and potential radar penetration. We compared several different interpolation methods to assess the best method to fill data voids and constrain unknown survey dates and the associated uncertainties with each method. The potential radar penetration is considered negligible for this assessment in view of the overall glacier changes, the length of the observation period, and the overall uncertainties. A comparison with earlier studies indicates that for glacier change assessments based on ICESat, data selection and averaging methodology strongly influences the results from these spatially limited measurements. This study promotes improved assessments of the contribution of glaciers to sea-level rise and encourages to extend geodetic glacier mass balances to all glaciers on Greenland. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Huber, Jacqueline McNabb, Robert Whitfield Zemp, Michael |
spellingShingle |
Huber, Jacqueline McNabb, Robert Whitfield Zemp, Michael Elevation Changes of West-Central Greenland Glaciers From 1985 to 2012 From Remote Sensing |
author_facet |
Huber, Jacqueline McNabb, Robert Whitfield Zemp, Michael |
author_sort |
Huber, Jacqueline |
title |
Elevation Changes of West-Central Greenland Glaciers From 1985 to 2012 From Remote Sensing |
title_short |
Elevation Changes of West-Central Greenland Glaciers From 1985 to 2012 From Remote Sensing |
title_full |
Elevation Changes of West-Central Greenland Glaciers From 1985 to 2012 From Remote Sensing |
title_fullStr |
Elevation Changes of West-Central Greenland Glaciers From 1985 to 2012 From Remote Sensing |
title_full_unstemmed |
Elevation Changes of West-Central Greenland Glaciers From 1985 to 2012 From Remote Sensing |
title_sort |
elevation changes of west-central greenland glaciers from 1985 to 2012 from remote sensing |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/10852/84041 http://urn.nb.no/URN:NBN:no-86774 https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2020.00035 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(163.800,163.800,-77.750,-77.750) |
geographic |
Geodetic Glacier Greenland |
geographic_facet |
Geodetic Glacier Greenland |
genre |
glacier Greenland greenlandic Ice Sheet |
genre_facet |
glacier Greenland greenlandic Ice Sheet |
op_source |
2296-6463 |
op_relation |
http://urn.nb.no/URN:NBN:no-86774 Huber, Jacqueline McNabb, Robert Whitfield Zemp, Michael . Elevation Changes of West-Central Greenland Glaciers From 1985 to 2012 From Remote Sensing. Frontiers in Earth Science. 2020, 8 http://hdl.handle.net/10852/84041 1886313 info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.jtitle=Frontiers in Earth Science&rft.volume=8&rft.spage=&rft.date=2020 Frontiers in Earth Science 8 0 https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2020.00035 URN:NBN:no-86774 Fulltext https://www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/10852/84041/2/feart-08-00035.pdf |
op_rights |
Attribution 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2020.00035 |
container_title |
Frontiers in Earth Science |
container_volume |
8 |
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1766009060042211328 |