Glacier velocity, the glacier's health indicator, is an emerging research interest in global warming among the scientific community over the current decade. As per scientific reports, due to their stable and advanced nature, the glaciers of Karakoram are exclusive. The present study focuses on understanding the temporal velocity variability of the Siachen Glacier, Shyok Basin, Karakoram using SAR datasets, in the perspective of the difficulties in estimating the glacier velocity over the inaccessible Karakoram Mountain. For the hydrological year 2017-18, 30 sentinel-1 derived interferograms using the DInSAR technique were analyzed to obtain Line Of Sight velocity. The transient velocity of the glacier reflects separate patterns within the glacier for different seasons due to the thermodynamic and orographic system over the glacier surface. In azimuth and range direction, the projected annual LOS velocity to a two-dimensional surface velocity is estimated to be around 103.8 ± 3.1 m/year.

In the Arctic, the impacts of global warming are strong and the rate of ice melting is increasingly accelerating due to warmer temperatures relative to snow accumulation. With recent advances in unmanned air vehicle (UAV) technology and image processing techniques, field measurements for cryosphere studies have gained significance today. In the current report, an attempt is being made to measure glacier surface melt over a four-day period using UAV acquisitions and field measurements to improve India's scientific credentials in polar science. Two aerial surveys were performed on 14 and 17 September 2019 using an indigenous Quadcopter UAV over a portion of the Ablation area of Vestre Broggerbreen glacier, Svalbard, Arctic. To measure precise surface melt, surface topography reconstructed from the acquired aerial images is processed. Results concluded that a surface melt was observed ranging from 0.013 m to 0.065 m, which agreed with the measurements in situ.

The present study focuses on using remote sensing techniques to estimate the Karakoram glacier velocity that emulates glacier’s reaction to climate warming. Proposed study is essential and critical due to the vast spatial and temporal variability of the Karakoram Glaciers, fieldwork difficulties, and the lack of in situ data in the Karakoram. It focuses on assessing the robustness in extracting the velocity products of the Rimo Glacier, Karakoram using DInSAR, Intensity tracking, and Normalized Cross-Correlation. The results indicate that the average velocity of the Rimo glacier estimated from DInSAR and correlation techniques are around 22.4 cm/day and 5.2 cm/day respectively which is similar to earlier studies. Intensity tracking based average velocity is found to be around 18 cm/day. Results obtained are also compared with field-based measurements for corroboration. Continuous monitoring of the velocity of Karakoram glaciers is necessary to understand the complex and evolving trends of surging in the future.