A new inventory of High Mountain Asia surge-type glaciers derived from multiple elevation datasets since the 1970s

Guo, Lei; Li, Jia; Dehecq, Amaury; Li, Zhiwei; Li, Xiaoqiong; Zhu, Jin

doi:10.5194/essd-2022-238

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 38 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Guillet and others (2022) generated an inventory of 666 glaciers that surged between 2000 and 2018 in HMA, using speed variations, elevation changes and visual surge signs as indicators. We include Guo and others (2022) in Figure 2, but not in our detailed analysis as they base their surge detection purely on elevation differences, which is a very different definition compared to the one used in the present study. Farnsworth and others (2016) list 708 surge-type glaciers on Svalbard compiled from previous studies and newly mapped using land-based crevasse squeeze ridges as surge indicator.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the global level, we compare our data to the Randolph Glacier Inventory version 6 (RGI-Consortium, 2017), on regional levels to surge inventories for HMA by Guillet and others (2022) and for Svalbard by Farnsworth and others (2016). We also combine an extended global surge inventory from RGI v.6 surges and a number of other regional surge inventories (Jiskoot and others, 2003; Sevestre and Benn, 2015; Farnsworth and others, 2016; Bhambri and others, 2017; Goerlich and others, 2020; Guan and others, 2022; Guillet and others, 2022; Guo and others, 2022). In the following, we term this inventory RGI-extended.…”

Section: Methods and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Global clustering of recent glacier surges from radar backscatter data, 2017–2022

et al. 2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Using global Sentinel-1 radar backscatter data, we systematically map the locations of glaciers with surge-type activity during 2017–22. Patterns of pronounced increases or decreases in the strongest backscatter between two winter seasons often indicate large changes in glacier crevassing, which we treat here as a sign of surge-type activity. Validations against velocity time series, terminus advances and crevassing found in optical satellite images confirm the robustness of this approach. We find 115 surge-type events globally between 2017 and 2022, around 100 of which on glaciers already know as surge-type. Our data reveal a pronounced spatial clustering in three regions, (i) Karakoram, Pamirs and Western Kunlun Shan (~50 surges), (ii) Svalbard (~25) and (iii) Yukon/Alaska (~9), with only a few other scattered surges elsewhere. This spatial clustering is significantly more pronounced than the overall global clustering of known surge-type glaciers. The 2017–22 clustering may point to climatic forcing of surge initiation.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methods and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Global clustering of recent glacier surges from radar backscatter data, 2017–2022

et al. 2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The presented inventory and the multi-temporal elevation change results used to identify surging glaciers are freely available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7961207 (Guo et al, 2023). The inventory contains glacier outlines and manually defined center points of surging glaciers with geometric attributes and is distributed in GeoPackage (.gpkg) and Esri shapefile (.shp) formats.…”

Section: Code and Data Availabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

A new inventory of High Mountain Asia surging glaciers derived from multiple elevation datasets since the 1970s

Guo

Dehecq

et al. 2023

Earth Syst. Sci. Data

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. Glacier surging is an unusual instability of ice flow, and inventories of surging glaciers are important for regional glacier mass balance studies and glacier dynamic studies. Glacier surges in High Mountain Asia (HMA) have been widely reported. However, the completeness of available inventories of HMA surging glaciers is hampered by the insufficient spatial and temporal coverage of glacier change observations or by the limitations of the identification methods. In this study, we established a new inventory of HMA surging glaciers based on glacier surface elevation changes and morphological changes over 4 decades. Three elevation change datasets based on four elevation sources (the KH-9 DEM, NASA DEM, COP30 DEM, and HMA DEM) and long-term Landsat satellite image series were utilized to assess the presence of typical surge features over two time periods (1970s–2000 and 2000–2020). A total of 890 surging and 336 probably or possibly surging glaciers were identified in HMA. Compared to the most recent inventory of surging glaciers in HMA, our inventory incorporated 253 previously unidentified surging glaciers. The number and area of surging glaciers accounted for ∼2.49 % (excluding glaciers smaller than 0.4 km2) and ∼16.59 % of the total glacier number and glacier area in HMA, respectively. Glacier surges were found in 21 of the 22 subregions of HMA (except for the Dzhungarsky Alatau); however, the density of surging glaciers is highly uneven. Glacier surges occur frequently in the northwestern subregions (e.g., Pamir and Karakoram) but less often in the peripheral subregions. The inventory further shows that surge activity is more likely to occur for glaciers with a larger area, longer length, and wider elevation range. Among glaciers with similar areas, the surging ones usually have steeper slopes than non-surging ones. The inventory and elevation change products of identified surging glaciers are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7961207 (Guo et al., 2023).

show abstract

Large-Scale Monitoring of Glacier Surges by Integrating High-Temporal- and -Spatial-Resolution Satellite Observations: A Case Study in the Karakoram

Zhang

Fan

et al. 2022

Remote Sensing

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Glacier surges have been increasingly reported from the mountain and high-latitude cryosphere. They represent active glaciological processes that affect the evolution of natural landscapes, and they possibly lead to catastrophic consequences, such as ice collapse, which threatens the downstream communities. Identifying and monitoring surge-type glaciers has been challenging due to the irregularity of the behavior and limitations on the spatiotemporal coverage of remote-sensing observations. With a focus on the Karakoram region, with concentrated surge-type glaciers, we present a new method to efficiently detect glacier-surging activities by integrating the high temporal resolution of MODIS imagery and the long-term archived medium spatial resolution of Landsat imagery. This method first detects the location and initial time of glacier surges by trend analysis (trend and breakpoint) from MODIS data, which is implemented by the Breaks for Additive Seasonal and Trend (BFAST) tool. The initial location and time information is then validated with the detailed surging features, such as the terminus-position changes from Landsat, and the thickness-change patterns from surface-elevation-change maps. Our method identified 74 surging events during 2000–2020 in the Karakoram, including three tributary-glacier surges, and seven newly detected surge-type glaciers. The surge-type glaciers tend to have longer lengths and smaller mean slopes compared with nonsurge-type glaciers. A comparison with previous studies demonstrated the method efficiency for detecting the surging of large-scale and mesoscale glaciers, with limitations on small and narrow glaciers due to the spatial-resolution limitation of MODIS images. For the 38 surge-type nondebris-covered glaciers, we provide details of the surging, which depict the high variability (heavy-tailed distribution) in the surging parameters in the region, and the concentration of the surge initiation during 2008–2010 and 2013–2015. The updated glacier-surging information solidifies the basis for a further investigation of the surging processes at polythermal glaciers, and for an improved assessment of the glacier-mass balance and monitoring of glacier hazards.

show abstract

A new inventory of High Mountain Asia surge-type glaciers derived from multiple elevation datasets since the 1970s

Cited by 3 publications

References 38 publications

Global clustering of recent glacier surges from radar backscatter data, 2017–2022

Global clustering of recent glacier surges from radar backscatter data, 2017–2022

A new inventory of High Mountain Asia surging glaciers derived from multiple elevation datasets since the 1970s

Large-Scale Monitoring of Glacier Surges by Integrating High-Temporal- and -Spatial-Resolution Satellite Observations: A Case Study in the Karakoram

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About