Halving of Swiss glacier volume since 1931 observed from terrestrial image photogrammetry

Mannerfelt, Erik Schytt; Dehecq, Amaury; Hugonnet, Romain; Hodel, Elias; Huss, Matthias; Bauder, Andreas; Farinotti, Daniel

doi:10.5194/tc-16-3249-2022

Cited by 12 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…The use of remote sensing has a number of advantages in glacier research, the most important of which is that the data do not require a large team in the field and can be used to quickly generate precise results. These factors have certainly contributed to the use of remote sensing methods since almost the very beginning of glaciological research (Finsterwalder, 1954;Stocker-Waldhuber et al, 2019;Mannerfelt et al, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unlocking archival maps of the Hornsund fjord area for monitoring glaciers of the Sørkapp Land peninsula, Svalbard

Dudek

Pętlicki

2021

Preprint

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Abstract. Archival maps are an invaluable source of information on the state of glaciers in polar zones and are very often basic research material for analysing changes in their geometry. However, basing a reliable comparative analysis on them requires they be standardised and precisely matched against modern-day cartographic materials. This can be achieved effectively using techniques and tools from the field of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The research objective was to accurately register archival topographic maps of the area surrounding the Hornsund fjord (southern Spitsbergen) published by the Polish Academy of Sciences, and to evaluate their potential for use in studying changes in the geometry of glaciers in the western part of the Sørkapp Land peninsula in 1961–90. Comparing the 1961 and 1990 data, glacier surfaces lowered by about 80–85 m for the largest land-terminating glaciers of the peninsula, and by up to more than 90 m for tidewater glaciers (above the line marking their 1984 extents). The dataset is now available from the Zenodo web portal: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4573130 (Dudek and Pętlicki, 2021).

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unlocking archival maps of the Hornsund fjord area for monitoring glaciers of the Sørkapp Land peninsula, Svalbard

Dudek

Pętlicki

2021

Preprint

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“…They are predominantly found in high-altitude regions such as the Alps, the Greater Caucasus Mountains, the Pyrenees, and high-latitude areas of the Scandinavian Peninsula in Norway and Sweden [34,35]. Since the 19th century, although some glaciers have occasionally exhibited a positive short-term mass balance, the overall trend across continental Europe has been a continuous retreat, with an increasing rate of recession [36]. Previous studies have predicted a significant glacier melting in the Alps by the end of this century, with a substantial loss of small glaciers and at least 80-90% mass loss in some larger glaciers [37].…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Unveiling Glacier Mass Balance: Albedo Aggregation Insights for Austrian and Norwegian Glaciers

Ye,

Cheng,

Hao

et al. 2024

Remote Sensing

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Assessing the regional mass balance of European glaciers presents significant challenges due to limited measurements. While various albedo methods have been explored for individual glaciers, a comprehensive analysis of aggregated albedo methods is lacking. Addressing this gap, in our study, we examined five MODIS aggregated albedos (raw average, minimum average, average minimum, interpolated average, and cumulative) versus the annual mass balance for 12 Austrian and Norwegian glaciers from 2001 to 2020 to establish connections between them. We find that the raw average albedo is strongly correlated with the annual mass balance of Austrian glaciers (r = 0.91), while the interpolated average albedo is significantly correlated with the annual mass balance of Norwegian glaciers (r = 0.90). Moreover, we observe that high-elevation glaciers experience fewer cloud cover days, allowing the raw average albedo to reliably estimate the annual mass balance, whereas low-elevation glaciers are often obscured by clouds, potentially masking the true minimum albedo. Additionally, traditional indicators, such as the equilibrium-line altitude and accumulation area ratio, exhibit significant correlations with the annual mass balance of Norwegian and Austrian glaciers (r = 0.90 and 0.87, respectively), yet albedo demonstrates higher robustness. These findings provide a reference for selecting appropriate aggregation methods to reconstruct glacier mass balance from albedo observations.

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“…Observations show clear evidence of a global trend of glacier retreat and mass loss in the last decades (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2019, 2021; Mannerfelt et al, 2022) and the rates of mass loss since the 1990s are unprecedented since the end of the Little Ice Age (LIA; Zemp et al, 2015). The highest rates of mass loss on the ice surface between 2000 and 2019 were observed in Iceland and in Central Europe (mean elevation change rate of more than -1 m/year), followed by Alaska, New Zealand and the Southern Andes (Hugonnet et al, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conservation of World Heritage glacial landscapes in a changing climate: The Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch case

Bussard,

Reynard

2024

Preprint

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Many glacial landscapes on all continents are inscribed on the World Heritage List. Due to climate change, most of the glaciers are retreating rapidly, thus questioning their Outstanding Universal Value (OUV). Ice loss could indeed reduce or modify the heritage values of the UNESCO World Heritage properties where glaciers are the core of the OUV and even question their inscription on the World Heritage List. In a future with fewer or without glaciers, at least two components of the OUV of World Heritage glacial landscapes could be affected: the aesthetic value (criterion vii), which could be reduced if glaciers disappear, and the geoheritage value (criterion viii), which is partly based on current glaciological processes that would no longer exist without ice. This presentation aims to clarify what constitute the heritage values of glacial landscapes and outlines how they could evolve in a future with less (or without) ice. For two sites in the UNESCO Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch property (the Great Aletsch Glacier and the Upper Lauterbrunnen Valley), we describe the evolution of the glacial landscape using a Past-Present-Future framework. We then evaluate the present and post-glacial heritage values according to criteria used in the literature on geomorphosites. We outline two main issues: 1. The two sites are characterized by a very high palaeogeographical interest: the inherited glacial landforms around the Great Aletsch Glacier and Lake Oberhorn have allowed the reconstruction of Holocene glacial stages. In the future, the inherited landforms of high palaeogeographical interest and the para- and periglacial processes that develop in post-glacier conditions are likely to gain interest, while the dynamics of the glacier itself, which is an important part of the current geoscientific value, will decline and even be lost when the glacier disappears. As glaciers retreat, the geoscientific value will therefore depend more and more on the inherited glacial landforms, which allow the understanding of the Earth and climate history, and less and less on the glacier itself and its dynamics. As the inherited landforms can be fragile, are non-renewable and will become more central to the heritage value, their protection is an issue. 2. The aesthetic value of glacial landscapes could decrease because of the disappearance of the glacier (landscape greying). One possible adaptation could be a shift from glacier tourism, which is mainly oriented towards the contemplation of an aesthetic landscape, to geotourism, where the understanding of landscape evolution is proposed to the public.

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Halving of Swiss glacier volume since 1931 observed from terrestrial image photogrammetry

Cited by 12 publications

References 58 publications

Unlocking archival maps of the Hornsund fjord area for monitoring glaciers of the Sørkapp Land peninsula, Svalbard

Unlocking archival maps of the Hornsund fjord area for monitoring glaciers of the Sørkapp Land peninsula, Svalbard

Unveiling Glacier Mass Balance: Albedo Aggregation Insights for Austrian and Norwegian Glaciers

Conservation of World Heritage glacial landscapes in a changing climate: The Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch case

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