Surface elevation changes of glaciers in the Cordillera Real and Tres Cruces, Bolivia, between 2000 and 2016

• Main Authors: Seehaus, Thorsten, Malz, Philipp, Sommer, Christian, Braun, Matthias Holger
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA 2019
• Subjects: Cordillera_Real; Cordillera Real; South American Altiplano; Bolivia; DEM; elevation change; File format; File name; File size; geodetic mass balance; Priority Programme 1158 Antarctic Research with Comparable Investigations in Arctic Sea Ice Areas; SPP1158; SRTM; TanDEM-X; tropical glacier; Uniform resource locator/link to file; Antarctic; Arctic; Antarc*; Climate change; Journal of Glaciology; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.907325; https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.907325

During the last decades, climate change has led to a significant shrinkage of glaciers in the Tropical Andes. However, there is a lack of recent multi-temporal quantifications of ice mass loss at mountain range to regional scales. We measure temporally consistent glacier area changes and geodetic mass balances throughout the Bolivian Cordillera Real and Tres Cruces based on multi-sensor remote sensing data in the period 2000-2016. By analyzing interferometric SAR data a geodetic mass balance of -399±98 kg m-2 a-1 and a total ice mass loss of 1.84±0.46 Gt is derived for 2000-2016. In more recent years, ice loss was above the average rate. A mass budget of -467±358 kg m-2 a-1 is found after 2013. These higher change rates can be attributed to the strong El Niño event in 2015/16. The data set consists of elevation change maps for each subregion (R1, R2, R3; see associated article) for the periods 2000-2013, 2000-2016 and 2013-2016. The glacier outlines used to delineate the glacier areas are available via the Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) database. Each elevation change map is a mosaic of several dh/dt GeoTiff data sets. The product is derived from differencing of TanDEM-X and SRTM Digital Elevation Models. See the associated article for further information regarding the generation of the data sets. Please note: The here provided elevation change maps are unfiltered (i.e. no outliers were removed) The "date_merge." data sets provide information on the observation period (measured in years relative to the date of the start of the observation period). Data sets with observation periods starting in 2000: The mean data of the SRTM mission (2000-02-16) is used as the data reference. Data sets with observation periods starting in 2013: The date of the individual TanDEM-X DEM tiles is used as data reference (date of TanDEM-X tiles in 2013 can be derived from the data sets covering the period 2000-2013; "SRTM mean date" + "date_merge_.2000-2013.")