Process understanding is key to assessing the sensitivity of glacier systems to changing climate. Comprehensive glacier monitoring provides the base for large-scale assessment of glacier change. Glaciers are monitored on different spatio-temporal scales, from extensive seasonal mass balance studies at selected glaciers to multi-decadal repeat inventories at the scale of entire mountain ranges. Internationally coordinated glacier monitoring aims at combining in-situ measurement with remotely sensed data, and local process understanding with global coverage. This session invites studies from a variety of disciplines, from tropical to polar glaciers, addressing both in-situ and remotely sensed monitoring of glaciers, as well as uncertainty assessments.

This year we will have a special sub-session on debris-covered glaciers.

Solicited speakers:

Fanny Brun (Univ. Grenoble Alpes): A spatially resolved estimate of High Mountain Asia glacier mass balances from 2000 to 2016: changes on debris-covered glaciers and comparison to ICESat and SPOT5-SRTM estimates.

Frank Paul (Univ. Zurich): Opportunities for glacier monitoring with new and up-coming satellite data.