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

Abstract

Abstract. The monitoring of glaciers in Switzerland has a long tradition, yet glacier changes during the 20th century are only known through sparse observations. Here, we estimate a halving of Swiss glacier volumes between 1931 and 2016 by mapping historical glacier elevation changes at high resolution. Our analysis relies on a terrestrial image archive known as TerrA, which covers about 86 % of the Swiss glacierised area with 21,703 images acquired during the period 1916–1947 (1931 on average). We developed a semi-automated workflow to generate digital elevation models (DEMs) from these images, resulting in a 45 % total glacier coverage. Using the geodetic method, we estimate a Swiss-wide glacier mass balance of –0.52 ± 0.09 m w.e. a−1 between 1931 and 2016. This equates to a 51.5 ± 6.1 % loss in glacier volume. We find that low elevation, high debris cover, and gently sloping glacier termini are conductive to particularly high mass losses. In addition to these glacier-specific, quasi- centennial elevation changes, we present a new inventory of glacier outlines with known timestamps and complete attributes from around 1931. The fragmented spatial coverage and temporal heterogeneity of the TerrA archive are the largest sources of uncertainty in our glacier-specific estimates, reaching up to 0.50 m w.e. a−1. We suggest that the high-resolution mapping of historic surface elevations could unlock great potentials also for research fields other than glaciology.

Brief Communication: Glacier mapping and change estimation using very high resolution declassified Hexagon KH-9 panoramic stereo imagery (1971–1984)

“…Providing reliable estimates of these long-term changes at regional scales still remains a challenge due to data scarcity. For some regions aerial photos provide the basis for long-term information (Mannerfelt et al, 2022;Korsgaard et al, 2016) but for most regions no historial images exist or are not available. Declassified data from the US satellite reconnaissance program, especially the KH-9 Mapping Camera (MC) and KH-4 Panoramic Camera (PC), have emerged as a key data source for mapping the state of the glaciers from 1960s-1980s (…”