Derivation of glaciological parameters from time series of multi-mission remote sensing data - Applications to glaciers in Antarctica and the Karakoram
Global warming led to an increase of the global mean surface air temperature of ~ 1.0 °C from pre-industrial times to now. This strongly affects all components of the Earth’s system and the complex interactions between them. Glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets are sensitive indicators of these changes...
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| Format: | Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2019
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| Online Access: | https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-fau/frontdoor/index/index/docId/12550 https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bvb:29-opus4-125508 https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-fau/files/12550/Dissertation_Friedl_final.pdf |
| Summary: | Global warming led to an increase of the global mean surface air temperature of ~ 1.0 °C from pre-industrial times to now. This strongly affects all components of the Earth’s system and the complex interactions between them. Glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets are sensitive indicators of these changes. The reduction of land ice masses, which are the world’s largest storages of freshwater, already has strong influence on human life on Earth today, but the influence is likely to increase in the future. This ranges from changes in seasonal freshwater availability over geomorphological hazards to global sea level rise, whereof the latter has already considerably accelerated during the last decades. Hence, monitoring and gaining a deep understanding of the behavior of glacial systems is of great importance. Space- and airborne remote sensing allows for regular monitoring of glaciological parameters over large and inaccessible areas. Modern satellite sensors like Sentinel-1 provide free and automatic access to global data at short repeat cycles. Using such data together with acquisitions from older missions, allows to generate long time series of glaciological parameters. Combining the resulting products with other measurements (e.g. climate data) reveals deep insights into driving factors, mechanisms and histories of glacier change. The main goal of this thesis is to investigate the potential of remote sensing and time series analysis for the quantification and understanding of glacier change. For this purpose, study areas with different characteristics in Antarctica and the Karakoram were selected. Glaciers in these areas were investigated using combinations of various glaciological products that were derived by using different remote sensing techniques and data. Time series of multi-spectral and radar (radio detecting and ranging) satellite imagery were used for mapping glacier fronts and surface structure. Glacier surface velocities were derived by means of intensity offset tracking techniques applied to dense, long ... |
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