EGU22-2367
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-2367
EGU General Assembly 2022
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Which are the largest glaciers in the world outside the ice sheets?

Michael Zemp1, Ann Windnagel2, Regine Hock3, Fabien Maussion4, Frank Paul1, Philipp Rastner1, and Bruce Raup2
Michael Zemp et al.
  • 1University of Zurich, Department of Geography, Zurich, Switzerland
  • 2US National Snow and Ice Data Center, Boulder, CO, USA
  • 3Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Norway
  • 4Department of Atmospheric and Cryospheric Sciences, University of Innsbruck, Austria

Glacier monitoring has been internationally coordinated for more than 125 years. Despite this long history there is no unambiguous answer to the popular question: which are the world’s largest glaciers?

In this study, we present a first scientific assessment of the largest glaciers in the world – distinct from the two ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica – and in the 19 regions used for the current Randolph Glacier Inventory. Ranking glaciers by size is non-trivial since it depends on how an individual glacier is defined and mapped. It is also important to differentiate between individual glaciers and glacier complexes, which are contiguous glaciers that meet at ice divides and might form an ice cap or ice field.

We find that the largest glacier complexes cover areas larger than ten thousand square kilometres, whereas the largest individual glaciers cover up to several thousand square kilometres. The world’s largest glaciers and glacier complexes are located on the Antarctic Peninsula, on sub-Antarctic Islands, in the Arctic, and in Patagonia. As such, the largest glacier complexes cover areas the size of smaller countries (e.g., Switzerland or Austria) or of smaller US states (e.g. New Jersey or South Carolina), but are still orders of magnitudes smaller than the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets.

In addition, we show that the ranking of glaciers requires not only clear definitions but depends on the availability, quality, and consistency of digital glacier outlines at global scale. Corresponding additional metadata are required in the available inventories to fully automate a glacier ranking by area, and to extend such a study to rankings by length, volume/mass, and other parameters.

How to cite: Zemp, M., Windnagel, A., Hock, R., Maussion, F., Paul, F., Rastner, P., and Raup, B.: Which are the largest glaciers in the world outside the ice sheets?, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-2367, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-2367, 2022.

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