Observational evidence indicates that a number of glaciers have lost mass in the past. Given that glaciers are highly impacted by the surrounding climate, human-influenced global warming may be partly responsible for mass loss. However, previous research studies have been limited to analyzing the past several decades, and it remains unclear whether past glacier mass losses are within the range ...

Since the mid-1980s, glaciers in the European Alps have shown widespread and accelerating mass losses. This article presents glacier-specific changes in surface elevation, volume and mass balance for all glaciers in the Swiss Alps from 1980 to 2010. Together with glacier outlines from the 1973 inventory, the DHM25 Level 1 digital elevation models (DEMs) for which the source data over glacierize...

[1] Ice cores drilled from glaciers around the world generally contain horizons with elevated levels of beta radioactivity including Cl and H associated with atmospheric thermonuclear bomb testing in the 1950s and 1960s. Ice cores collected in 2006 from Naimona’nyi Glacier in the Himalaya (Tibet) lack these distinctive marker horizons suggesting no net accumulation of mass (ice) since at least ...

Widespread glacier acceleration has been observed in Greenland in the past few years1–4 associated with the thinning of the lower reaches of the glaciers as they terminate in the ocean5–7. These glaciers thin both at the surface, from warm air temperatures, and along their submerged faces in contact with warm ocean waters8. Little is known about the rates of submarine melting9–11 and how they m...

Although they correspond to an important fraction of the total area of mountain glaciers (33000 km out of 546000 km), Himalayan glaciers and their mass balance are poorly sampled. For example, between 1977 and 1999, the average area surveyed each year on the field was 6.8 km only. No direct mass balance measurement is available after 1999. To contribute to fill this gap, we use remote sensing d...

We investigate the elevation and mass-balance response of tributary glaciers following the loss of the Larsen A and B ice shelves, Antarctic Peninsula (in 1995 and 2002 respectively). Our study uses MODIS imagery to track ice extent, and ASTER and SPOT5 digital elevation models (DEMs) plus ATM and ICESat laser altimetry to track elevation changes, spanning the period 2001–09. The measured Larse...

[1] The digital elevation model (DEM) from the 2000 Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) was differenced from a composite DEM based on air photos dating from 1948 to 1987 to determine glacier volume changes in southeast Alaska and adjoining Canada. SRTM accuracy was assessed at ±5 m through comparison with airborne laser altimetry and control locations measured with GPS. Glacier surface elev...

Introduction: Each of the Tharsis Montes volcanoes on Mars has an unusual fan-shaped deposit on the NW flank and adjacent plains. These deposits appear to be the depositional remains of massive cold-based glaciers that were present at each of the shields in relatively recent martian history [1,2]. These glaciers would have formed during periods of high obliquity (>45°), when precipitation of wa...

Northern Hemisphere alpine glaciers have been identified as a point of concentration and reemergence of legacy organochlorine pollutants (OCPs). In this review, we compile a selection of published literature combining long-range, global atmospheric transport and distribution-based compartmental environmental flux models, as well as data from glacial meltwater, ice core, crevasse and proglacial ...

Calving glaciers contribute substantially to sea level rise, but they are challenging to represent in models. Fine resolution is required for continental-scale models to accurately resolve calving dynamics, and in many cases glacier geometry is too complicated to be adequately reflected by more simplified models. Flowline models are able to resolve flow along the main branch of a glacier, but m...