Mountain glaciers are known to be strongly affected by global climate change. Here we compute temporally consistent changes in glacier area, surface elevation and ice mass over the entire European Alps between 2000 and 2014. We apply remote sensing techniques on an extensive database of optical and radar imagery covering 93% of the total Alpine glacier volume. Our results reveal rapid glacier retreat across the Alps (−39 km² a⁻¹) with regionally variable ice thickness changes (−0.5 to −0.9 m a⁻¹). The strongest downwasting is observed in the Swiss Glarus and Lepontine Alps with specific mass change rates up to −1.03 m.w.e. a⁻¹. For the entire Alps a mass loss of 1.3 ± 0.2 Gt a⁻¹ (2000–2014) is estimated. Compared to previous studies, our estimated mass changes are similar for the central Alps, but less negative for the lower mountain ranges. These observations provide important information for future research on various socio-economic impacts like water resource management, risk assessments and tourism.

Glaciers in tropical regions are very sensitive to climatic variations and thus strongly affected by climate change. The majority of the tropical glaciers worldwide are located in the Peruvian Andes, which have shown significant ice loss in the last century. Here, we present the first multi-temporal, region-wide survey of geodetic mass balances and glacier area fluctuations throughout Peru covering the period 2000–2016. Glacier extents are derived from Landsat imagery by performing automatic glacier delineation based on a combination of the NDSI and band ratio method and final manual inspection and correction. The mapping of debris-covered glacier extents is supported by synthetic aperture radar (SAR) coherence information. A total glacier area loss of $-\mathrm{548.5}\pm \mathrm{65.7}$ km² (−29 %, −34.3 km² a⁻¹) is obtained for the study period. Using interferometric satellite SAR acquisitions, bi-temporal geodetic mass balances are derived. An average specific mass balance of $-\mathrm{296}\pm \mathrm{41}$ kg m⁻² a⁻¹ is found throughout Peru for the period 2000–2016. However, there are strong regional and temporal differences in the mass budgets ranging from 45±97 to $-\mathrm{752}\pm \mathrm{452}$ kg m⁻² a⁻¹. The ice loss increased towards the end of the observation period. Between 2013 and 2016, a retreat of the glacierized area of $-\mathrm{203.8}\pm \mathrm{65.7}$ km² (−16 %, −101.9 km² a⁻¹) is mapped and the average mass budget amounts to $-\mathrm{660}\pm \mathrm{178}$ kg m⁻² a⁻¹. The glacier changes revealed can be attributed to changes in the climatic settings in the study region, derived from ERA-Interim reanalysis data and the Oceanic Nino Index. The intense El Niño activities in 2015/16 are most likely the trigger for the increased change rates in the time interval 2013–2016. Our observations provide fundamental information on the current dramatic glacier changes for local authorities and for the calibration and validation of glacier change projections.

Despite their importance for mass-balance estimates and the progress in techniques based on optical and thermal satellite imagery, the mapping of debris-covered glacier boundaries remains a challenging task. Manual corrections hamper regular updates. In this study, we present an automatic approach to delineate glacier outlines using interferometrically derived synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) coherence, slope and morphological operations. InSAR coherence detects the temporally decorrelated surface (e.g. glacial extent) irrespective of its surface type and separates it from the highly coherent surrounding areas. We tested the impact of different processing settings, for example resolution, coherence window size and topographic phase removal, on the quality of the generated outlines. We found minor influence of the topographic phase, but a combination of strong multi-looking during interferogram generation and additional averaging during coherence estimation strongly deteriorated the coherence at the glacier edges. We analysed the performance of X-, C- and L- band radar data. The C-band Sentinel-1 data outlined the glacier boundary with the least misclassifications and a type II error of 0.47% compared with Global Land Ice Measurements from Space inventory data. Our study shows the potential of the Sentinel-1 mission together with our automatic processing chain to provide regular updates for land-terminating glaciers on a large scale.

Ice cliffs within a glacier represent a challenge for the continuity equations used in many glacier models by interrupting the validity of input parameters. In the case of Gourdon Glacier on James Ross Island, Antarctica, a ∼300–500 $\mathrm{m}$ high, almost vertical cliff, separates the outlet glacier from its main accumulation area on the plateau of the island. In 2017 and 2018 we conducted ice thickness measurements during two airborne ground penetrating radar campaigns in order to evaluate differences to older measurements from the 1990s. The observed differences are mostly smaller than the estimated error bars. In comparison to the in situ data, the published “consensus ice thickness estimate” strongly overestimates the ice thickness at the outlet. We analyse three different interpolation and ice thickness reconstruction methods. One approach additionally includes the mass input from the plateau. Differences between the interpolation methods have a minor impact on the ice discharge estimation if the used flux gates are in areas with a good coverage of in situ measurements. A much stronger influence was observed by uncertainties in the glacier velocities derived from remote sensing, especially in the direction of the velocity vector in proximity to the ice cliff. We conclude that the amount of in situ measurements should be increased for specific glacier types in order to detect biases in modeled ice thickness and ice discharge estimations.

Precise and accurate three-dimensional geospatial data has become increasingly available thanks to advances in both Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) and Structure-from-Motion Photogrammetry (SfM). These tools provide valuable information for mapping geomorphological features and detect surface changes in mountainous environments. The exploitation of 3D point-clouds has been proven tremendously useful in the field of geosciences. It remains, however, controversial whether cost efficient photogrammetry can provide as accurate and reliable geospatial information as the significantly more expensive laser scanning or not. In this study, a rockfall case site in the territory of Obergurgl, Austria, is investigated in order to provide answers to the above question in a complex environment. The analysis includes different terrestrial photogrammetry configurations aiming to comprehensively define the strengths and limitations of terrestrial photogrammetry over TLS. The latter constitutes an optimized methodology that provides guidelines for costly future assessments as part of the site investigation phase in geohazard management. There are no doubts that compared to traditional and conventional surveying methods TLS and Photogrammetry both offer products much faster and with a much higher data density. In the current study, we show that when photogrammetry is applied following a well-defined optimized strategy, it can be potentially an adequate alternative to more costly TLS datasets for mass movement assessment and monitoring purposes.

The northern Antarctic Peninsula was affected by a significant warming over the second half of the 20th century and the collapse of several ice shelves. Local climate conditions on James Ross Island on the northeastern coast can differ strongly from the main part of the Antarctic Peninsula. This paper reports the spatial and temporal variability of glacier surface velocities and the area of their outlets throughout James Ross Island, and evaluates potential relationships with atmospheric and oceanic conditions. Velocity estimates were retrieved from intensity feature tracking of scenes from satellite synthetic aperture radar sensors TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X between 2014 and 2018, which were validated against ground observations. Calving front positions back to 1945 were used to calculate outlet area changes for the glaciers by using a common-box approach. The annual recession rates of almost all investigated glacier calving fronts decelerated for the time periods 2009–2014 and 2014–2018 in comparison to the period 1988–2009, but their velocity patterns differed. Analysis of atmospheric conditions failed to explain the different patterns in velocity and area changes. We suggest a strong influence from local bathymetric conditions. Future investigations of the oceanic conditions would be necessary for a profound understanding of the super-position of different influencing factors.