EGU22-4484
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-4484
EGU General Assembly 2022
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

The Randolph Glacier Inventory (RGI) version 7

Fabien Maussion1, Regine Hock2, Frank Paul3, Philipp Rastner1,3, Bruce Raup4, Michael Zemp5, and the RGI Consortium
Fabien Maussion et al.
  • 1Universität Innsbruck, Department of Atmospheric and Cryospheric Sciences, Innsbruck, Austria (fabien.maussion@uibk.ac.at)
  • 2Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
  • 3University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
  • 4National Snow and Ice Data Center, Boulder, USA
  • 5World Glacier Monitoring Service, Zurich, Switzerland

The Randolph Glacier Inventory (RGI) is a globally complete collection of digital glacier outlines, excluding the two ice sheets. It has become a pillar of glaciological research at global and regional scales for estimates of recent and future glacier changes, glacier mass balance, glacier contribution to sea-level rise, among others. The latest RGI version (V6) was released in July 2017.


Here, we present a new version of the RGI (version 7.0), which is our best estimate of global glacier outlines around the year 2000. Unlike previous versions which were compiled by an ad-hoc manual process using different sources, RGI7.0 is generated directly from the Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) glacier database, ensuring full traceability of single outlines to their original authors. The dataset is generated automatically with Python scripts parsing the GLIMS database and selecting outlines according to community decisions (based on data availability, quality and closeness to the year 2000). Prior to its release, the dataset was available for open review from the scientific community, and further refined as necessary.


About 70% of the outlines (30% of the total area) in RGI7.0 are obtained from new inventories that were submitted to GLIMS since the last release of RGI6.0 by different groups around the world. This led to considerable quality improvements especially in High Mountain Asia, Northern Canada, northern Greenland, Caucasus and Middle East, South America and New Zealand. RGI7.0 includes updated topographical and geometrical glacier attributes generated with a new community software. The new RGI generation process is open-source, fully reproducible and easily adaptable, making future updates straightforward to generate.

How to cite: Maussion, F., Hock, R., Paul, F., Rastner, P., Raup, B., Zemp, M., and Consortium, T. R.: The Randolph Glacier Inventory (RGI) version 7, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-4484, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-4484, 2022.

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