While the responses of Tien Shan glaciers--and glaciers elsewhere--to climatic changes are becoming increasingly well understood, this is less the case for permafrost in general and for rock glaciers in particular. We use a novel approach to describe the climate sensitivity of rock glaciers and to reconstruct periods of high and low rock glacier activity in the Tien Shan since 1895. Using more ...

Glaciers in the Arctic are losing mass at an increasing rate. Here we use surface topography derived from Structure from Motion (SfM) and ice volume from ground penetrating radar (GPR) to describe the 2014 state of Aqqutikitsoq glacier (2.85 km) on Greenland’s west coast. A photogrammetrically derived 1985 digital elevation model (DEM) was subtracted from a 2014 DEM obtained using land-based Sf...

Moraine-dammed lakes at debris-covered glaciers are becoming increasingly common and pose significant outburst flood hazards if the dam is breached. While moraine subsurface structure and internal processes are likely to influence dam stability, only few sites have so far been investigated. We conducted electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) surveys at two sites on the terminal moraine complex...

Monitoring glacier changes is essential for estimating the water mass balance of the Tibetan Plateau. In this study, we exploit ICESat laser altimetry data in combination with the SRTM DEM and the GLIMS glacier mask to estimate trends in change in glacial thickness between 2003 and 2009 on the whole Tibetan Plateau. Considering acquisition conditions of ICESat measurements and terrain surface c...

Feature tracking of approximately annually separated Landsat-7 ETM+ imagery acquired from 1999 to 2010 and speckle tracking of 24-day separated RADARSAT-2 imagery acquired from 2009 to 2015 reveal that motion of the major tidewater glaciers of Devon Ice Cap is more variable than previously described. The flow of almost half (six of 14) of the outlet glaciers slowed over the observation period, ...

The second Chinese glacier inventory was compiled based on 218 Landsat TM/ETM+ scenes acquired mainly during 2006–10. The widely used band ratio segmentation method was applied as the first step in delineating glacier outlines, and then intensive manual improvements were performed. The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission digital elevation model was used to derive altitudinal attributes of glaciers...

GPS campaigns on glaciers during jökulhlaups show how subglacial floods affect glacier motion and shed light on the dynamics of such floods. Three such campaigns have been carried out on southern and western Vatnajökull, southeast Iceland, over known jökulhlaup paths. Two slowly rising jökulhlaups from Grímsvötn and two rapidly rising jökulhlaups from the western and eastern Skaftá cauldrons we...

Are investigated climate change impacts on glacier melt discharge in the tropical Andes given its relevance to water resources. The means are the investigation of net radiation and potential glacier melt trends. For such purposes is assessed the investigation of the Surface and Energy Balance algorithm (SEBAL) performance, and is carried a practical application to establish the relevance of the...

There are procedures and methods for verification of coding algebra and for validations of models and calculations that are in use in the aerospace computational fluid dynamics (CFD) community. These methods would be efficacious if used by the glacier dynamics modeling community. This paper is a presentation of some of those methods, and how they might be applied to uncertainty management suppo...

[1] The reasons for the accelerated glacier retreat observed since the early 1980s in the tropical Andes are analyzed based on the well-documented Chacaltaya glacier (Bolivia). Monthly mass balance measurements available over the entire 1991–2001 decade are interpreted in the light of a recent energy balance study performed on nearby Zongo glacier and further put into a larger-scale context by ...