TC The Cryosphere TC 1994-0424 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/tc-6-1483-2012 The first complete inventory of the local glaciers and ice caps on Greenland Rastner P. 1 Bolch T. 1 2 Mölg N. 1 Machguth H. 1 3 Le Bris R. 1 Paul F. 1 Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland Institute for Cartography, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany Marine Geology and Glaciology, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland – GEUS, København, Denmark 10 12 2012 6 6 1483 1495 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.the-cryosphere.net/6/1483/2012/tc-6-1483-2012.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.the-cryosphere.net/6/1483/2012/tc-6-1483-2012.pdf

Glacier inventories provide essential baseline information for the determination of water resources, glacier-specific changes in area and volume, climate change impacts as well as past, potential and future contribution of glaciers to sea-level rise. Although Greenland is heavily glacierised and thus highly relevant for all of the above points, a complete inventory of its glaciers was not available so far. Here we present the results and details of a new and complete inventory that has been compiled from more than 70 Landsat scenes (mostly acquired between 1999 and 2002) using semi-automated glacier mapping techniques. A digital elevation model (DEM) was used to derive drainage divides from watershed analysis and topographic attributes for each glacier entity. To serve the needs of different user communities, we assigned to each glacier one of three connectivity levels with the ice sheet (CL0, CL1, CL2; i.e. no, weak, and strong connection) to clearly, but still flexibly, distinguish the local glaciers and ice caps (GIC) from the ice sheet and its outlet glaciers. In total, we mapped ~ 20 300 glaciers larger than 0.05 km<sup>2</sup> (of which ~ 900 are marine terminating), covering an area of 130 076 ± 4032 km<sup>2</sup>, or 89 720 ± 2781 km<sup>2</sup> without the CL2 GIC. The latter value is about 50% higher than the mean value of more recent previous estimates. Glaciers smaller than 0.5 km<sup>2</sup> contribute only 1.5% to the total area but more than 50% (11 000) to the total number. In contrast, the 25 largest GIC (> 500 km<sup>2</sup>) contribute 28% to the total area, but only 0.1% to the total number. The mean elevation of the GIC is 1700 m in the eastern sector and around 1000 m otherwise. The median elevation increases with distance from the coast, but has only a weak dependence on mean glacier aspect.

 References Ahlstrøm, A. P., Gravesen, P., Bech Andersen, S., van As, D., Citterio, M., Fausto, R. S., Nielsen, S., Jepsen, H. F., Kristensen, S. S., Christensen, E. L. Stenseng, L., Forsberg, R., Hanson, S., and Petersen, D.: A new programme for monitoring the mass loss of the Greenland ice sheet, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland Bulletin, 15, 61–64, 2008. Arendt, A., Bolch, T., J.G. Cogley, J.G, Gardner, A., Hagen, J.-O., Hock, R., Kaser, G., Pfeffer, W.T., Moholdt, G., Paul, F., Radi\'c, V., Andreassen, L., Bajracharya, S., Beedle, M., Berthier, E., Bhambri, R., Bliss, A., Brown, I., Burgess, E., Burgess, D., Cawkwell, F., Chinn, T., Copland, L., Davies, B., De Angelis, H., Dolgova, E., Filbert, K., Forester, R., Fountain, A., Frey, H., Giffen, B., Glasser, N., Gurney, S., Hagg, W., Hall, D., Haritashya, U.K., Hartmann, G., Helm, C., Herreid, S., Howat, I., Kapustin, G., Khromova, T., Kienholz, C., Koenig, M., Kohler, J., Kriegel, D., Kutuzov, S., Lavrentiev, I., LeBris, R., Lund, J., Manley, W., Mayer, C., Miles, E., Li, X., Menounos, B., Mercer, A., Moelg, N., Mool, P., Nosenko, G., Negrete, A., Nuth, C., Pettersson, R., Racoviteanu, A., Ranzi, R., Rastner, P., Rau, F., Raup, B.H., Rich, J., Rott, H., Schneider, C., Seliverstov, Y., Sharp, M., Sigur\dhsson, O., Stokes, C., Wheate, R., Winsvold, S., Wolken, G., Wyatt, F., and Zheltyhina, N.: Randolph Glacier Inventory [v2.0]: A Dataset of Global Glacier Outlines. Global Land Ice Measurements from Space, Boulder Colorado, USA, Digital Media, 2012. Bales, R. C., Guo, Q., Shen, D., McConnell, J. R., Du, G., Burkhart, J. F., Spikes, V. B., Hanna, E., and Cappelen, J.: Annual accumulation for Greenland updated using ice core data developed during 2000–2006 and analysis of daily coastal meteorological data, J. Geophys. Res, 114, D06116, http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2008JD011208doi:10.1029/2008JD011208, 2009. Bishop, M. P., Olsenholler, J. A., Shroder, J. F., Barry, R. G., Raup, B. H., Bush, A. B. G., Copland, L., Dwyer, J. L., Fountain, A. G., Haeberli, W., Kääb, A., Paul, F., Hall, D. K., Kargel, J. S., Molnia, B. F., Trabant, D. C., and Wessels, R.: Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS): remote sensing and GIS investigations of the Earth's cryosphere, Geocarto International, 19, 57–84, 2004. Bolch, T.: Climate change and glacier retreat in northern Tien Shan (Kazakhstan/Kyrgyzstan) using remote sensing data, Global Planet. Change, 56, 1–12, 2007. Bolch, T., Menounos, B., and Wheate, R.: Landsat-based inventory of glaciers in western Canada, 1985–2005, Remote Sens. Environ., 114, 127–137, 2010. Box, J. E., Bromwich, D. H., Veenhuis, B. A., Bai, L. S., Stroeve, J. C., Rogers, J. C., Steffen, K., Haran, T., and Wang, S. H.: Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Mass Balance Variability (1988–2004) from Calibrated Polar MM5 Output, J. Climate, 19, 2783–2800, 2006. Braithwaite, R. J. and Raper, S. C. B.: Estimating equilibrium-line altitude (ELA) from glacier inventory data, Ann. Glaciol., 50, 127–132, 2009. Bull, C. and Studies, O. S. U. I. of P.: Glaciological reconnaissance of the Sukkertoppen ice cap, south-west Greenland, Ohio State University, Institute of Polar Studies, 813–816, 1963. Burgess, E. W., Forster, R. R., Box, J. E., Mosley-Thompson, E., Bromwich, D. H., Bales, R. C., and Smith, L. C.: A spatially calibrated model of annual accumulation rate on the Greenland Ice Sheet (1958–2007), J. Geophys. Res, 115, F02004, http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2009JF001293doi:10.1029/2009JF001293, 2010. Cappelen, J., Laursen, E. V., Jørgensen, P. V., and Kern-Hansen, C.: DMI monthly Climate Data Collection 1768–2006, Denmark, The Faroe Islands and Greenland, Technical Report 07-06, 2007. Citterio, M. and Ahlstrøm, A. P.: Brief communication "The aerophotogrammetric map of Greenland ice masses", The Cryosphere Discuss., 6, 3891–3902, http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/tcd-6-3891-2012doi:10.5194/tcd-6-3891-2012, 2012. Citterio, M., Paul, F., Ahlstrom, A. P., Jepsen, H. F., and Weidick, A.: Remote sensing of glacier change in West Greenland: accounting for the occurrence of surge-type glaciers, Ann. Glaciol., 50, 70–80, 2009. Cogley, G.: The Future of the World's Glaciers. In: The Future of the World's Climate, edited by: Henderson-Sellers, A. and McGuffie, K., Elsevier, Amsterdam, 197–222, 2012. 2012. Danko, D. M.: The digital chart of the world project, Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, 58, 1125–1128, 1992. Dowdeswell, J. and Hambrey, M.: Islands of the Arctic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 280 pp., 2002. Ettema, J., Van Den Broeke, M. R., Van Meijgaard, E., Van De Berg, W. J., Bamber, J. L., Box, J. E., and Bales, R. C.: Higher surface mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet revealed by high-resolution climate modeling, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L12501, http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2009GL038110doi:10.1029/2009GL038110, 2009. Evans, I. S. and Cox, N. J.: Global variations of local asymmetry in glacier altitude: separation of northsouth and eastwest components, J. Glaciol., 51, 469–482, 2005. Ferranti, J.: Greenland first edition DEM, available at: http://www.viewfinderpanoramas.org/dem3.html #greenland, 2012. Fettweis, X., Hanna, E., Gallée, H., Huybrechts, P., and Erpicum, M.: Estimation of the Greenland ice sheet surface mass balance for the 20th and 21st centuries, The Cryosphere, 2, 117–129, http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/tc-2-117-2008doi:10.5194/tc-2-117-2008, 2008. Hammer, C. U.: The Hans Tausen Ice Cap, Meddelelser om Grønland, Geoscience, 39, Copenhagen, Danish Polar Center, 2001. Helsen, M. M., van de Wal, R. S. W., van den Broeke, M. R., van de Berg, W. J., and Oerlemans, J.: Coupling of climate models and ice sheet models by surface mass balance gradients: application to the Greenland Ice Sheet, The Cryosphere, 6, 255–272, http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/tc-6-255-2012doi:10.5194/tc-6-255-2012, 2012. Hock, R., de Woul, M., Radic, V., and Dyurgerov, M.: Mountain glaciers and ice caps around Antarctica make a large sea-level rise contribution, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L07501, http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2008GL037020doi:10.1029/2008GL037020, 2009. Howat, I. and Negrete, A.: A high-resolution ice mask for the Greenland Ice Sheet and peripheral glaciers and icecaps, available at: http://bprc.osu.edu/GDG/icemask.php (last access: December 2012), in preparation, 2012. Howat, I., Negrete, A., Scambos, T., and Haran, T.: A high-resolution elevation model for the Greenland Ice Sheet from combined stereoscopic and photoclinometric data, available at: http://bprc.osu.edu/GDG/gimpdem.php (last access: December 2012), in preparation, 2012. Huss, M. and Farinotti, D.: Distributed ice thickness and volume of all glaciers around the globe, J. Geophys. Res., 117, F04010, http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2012JF002523doi:10.1029/2012JF002523, 2012. Jiskoot, H., Murray, T., and Luckman, A.: Surge potential and drainage-basin characteristics in East Greenland, Ann. Glaciol., 36, 142–148, 2003. Jiskoot, H., Juhlin, D., St. Pierre, H., and Citterio, M.: Tidewater glacier fluctuations in central East Greenland coastal and fjord regions (1980s–2005), Ann. Glaciol., 53, 35–44, http://dx.doi.org/10.3189/2012AoG60A030doi:10.3189/2012AoG60A030, 2012. Kargel, J. S., Ahlstrøm, A. P., Alley, R. B., Bamber, J. L., Benham, T. J., Box, J. E., Chen, C., Christoffersen, P., Citterio, M., Cogley, J. G., Jiskoot, H., Leonard, G. J., Morin, P., Scambos, T., Sheldon, T., and Willis, I.: Brief communication Greenland's shrinking ice cover: "fast times" but not that fast, The Cryosphere, 6, 533–537, http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/tc-6-533-2012doi:10.5194/tc-6-533-2012, 2012 Le Bris, R., Paul, F., Frey, H., and Bolch, T.: A new satellite-derived glacier inventory for western Alaska, Ann. Glaciol., 52, 135–143, 2011. Lemke, P.: Climate change 2007: the physical science basis: contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge Univ. Pr., 2007. Meier, M. F., Dyurgerov, M. B., Rick, U. K., O'Neel, S., Pfeffer, W. T., Anderson, R. S., Anderson, S. P., and Glazovsky, A. F.: Glaciers Dominate Eustatic Sea-Level Rise in the 21st Century, Science, 317, 1064–1067, http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1143906doi:10.1126/science.1143906, 2007. Ohmura, A.: Completing the world glacier inventory, Ann. Glaciol., 50, 144–148, 2009. Ohmura, A. and Reeh, N.: New precipitation and accumulation maps for Greenland, J. Glaciol., 37, 140–148, 1991. Paul, F.: Melting glaciers and ice caps, Nature Geosci., 4, 71–72, 2011. Paul, F. and Andreassen, L. M.: A new glacier inventory for the Svartisen region, Norway, from Landsat ETM$+$ data: challenges and change assessment, J. Glaciol., 55, 607–618, 2009. Paul, F. and Kaab, A.: Perspectives on the production of a glacier inventory from multispectral satellite data in Arctic Canada: Cumberland Peninsula, Baffin Island, Ann. Glaciol., 42, 59–66, 2005. Paul, F., Kaab, A., Maisch, M., Kellenberger, T. and Haeberli, W.: The new remote-sensing-derived Swiss glacier inventory: I. Methods, Ann. Glaciol., 34, 355–361, 2002. Paul, F., Barry, R. G., Cogley, J. G., Frey, H., Haeberli, W., Ohmura, A., Ommanney, C. S. L., Raup, B., Rivera, A., and Zemp, M.: Recommendations for the compilation of glacier inventory data from digital sources, Ann. Glaciol., 50, 119–126, 2009. Paul, F., Andreassen, L. M., and Winsvold, S. H.: A new glacier inventory for the Jostedalsbreen region, Norway, from Landsat TM scenes of 2006 and changes since 1966, Ann. Glaciol., 52, 153–162, 2011. Paul, F., Barrand, N., Berthier, E., Bolch, T., Casey, K., Frey, H., Joshi, S. P., Konovalov, V., Le Bris, R., Mölg, N., Nosenko, G., Nuth, C., Pope, A., Racoviteanu, A., Rastner, P., Raup, B., Scharrer, K., Steffen, S., and Winsvold, S.: On the accuracy of glacier outlines derived from remote sensing data, Ann. Glaciol., 54, in press, 2012. Racoviteanu, A. E., Paul, F., Raup, B., Khalsa, S. J., and Armstrong, R.: Challenges and recommendations in mapping of glacier parameters from space: results of the 2008 Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) workshop, Boulder, Colorado, USA, Ann. Glaciol., 50, 53–69, 2009. Radi\'c, V. and Hock, R.: Regional and global volumes of glaciers derived from statistical upscaling of glacier inventory data, J. Geophys. Res, 115, F01010, http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2009JF001373doi:10.1029/2009JF001373, 2010. Raper, S. C. and Braithwaite, R. J.: Low sea level rise projections from mountain glaciers and icecaps under global warming, Nature, 439, 311–313, 2006. Raup, B., Kääb, A., Kargel, J. S., Bishop, M. P., Hamilton, G., Lee, E., Paul, F., Rau, F., Soltesz, D., Khalsa, S. J. Beedle, M., and Helm, C.: Remote sensing and GIS technology in the Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) project, Comput. Geosci., 33, 104–125, 2007. Rignot, E. and Mouginot, J.: Ice flow in Greenland for the International Polar Year 2008–2009, Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L11501, http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2012GL051634doi:10.1029/2012GL051634, 2012. Steffen, K. and Box, J. E.: Surface climatology of the Greenland ice sheet: Greenland Climate Network 1995–1999, J. Geophys. Res., 106, 951–964, 2001. Weidick, A.: Surging glaciers in Greenland – a status, Rapp. Grønl. Geol. Unders., 140, 106–110, 1988. Weidick, A. and Morris, E.: Local glaciers surrounding the continental ice sheets, in: Into the Second Century of World Glacier Monitoring- Prospects and Strategies. A contribution to the IHP and the GEMS, edited by: Haeberli, W, Hoelzle, M., and Suter, S., Prepared by the World Glacier Monitoring Service UNESCO (Chapter 12), 197–207, 1998. Weidick, A., Boeggild, C. E., and Knudsen, N. T.: Glacier inventory and atlas of West Greenland, Rapp. Grønl. Geol. Unders., 158, 194 pp., 1992. Weidick, A.: Greenland, in: Satellite image atlas of glaciers of the world, edited by: Williams Jr., R. S. and Ferrigno, J. G., US Geological Survey Professional Paper 1386-C, 141 pp., 1995. Yde, J. C. and Knudsen, N. T.: Observations of debris-rich naled associated with a major glacier surge event, Disko Island, West Greenland, Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, 16, 319–325, http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ppp.533doi:10.1002/ppp.533, 2005.