Results and Achievements of the Glaciers_cci Project
Paul, Frank¹; Bolch, Tobias¹; Frey, Othmar²; Kaab, Andreas³; Moelg, Nico¹; Nagler, Thomas⁴; Nuth, Christopher³; Scharer, Kilian⁴; Shepherd, Andrew⁵; Strozzi, Tazio²; Ticconi, Francesca⁵; Wiesmann, Andreas^2
1University of Zurich, SWITZERLAND; ²Gamma Remote Sensing, SWITZERLAND; ³University of Oslo, NORWAY; ⁴Enveo, AUSTRIA; ⁵University of Leeds, UNITED KINGDOM

With glacier changes being key indicators of climate change and considering the massive glacier mass and area loss in the recent past, satellite data are key to follow and determine their changes precisely on a global scale. In reaction to a change in climate, glaciers adjust their flow velocity, surface elevation, and extent. All three characteristics can be well monitored from satellite data and are investigated in the Glaciers_cci project. As a first step, glacier outlines are needed as a reference for change assessment and determination of glacier-specific values. A missing globally complete glacier inventory was identified as the main botte-neck for the related global-scale assessments.

The Glaciers_cci project has helped to complete the global inventory for the next IPCC report and also contributed to an improved error assessment and standardized processing workflows. Such workflows were also developed for the velocity and elevation change products. They are either based on optical or microwave data as an input (velocity) and use a similar algorithm to derive the product (feature tracking), or they use different algorithms to derive elevation changes from either point measurement (altimetry) or raster calculations (DEM differencing). Apart from investigating these products and their most efficient calculation from a more theoretical point of view, the Glaciers_cci project has already provided a large mount of datasets to the community (e.g. glacier outlines from Greenland, Svalbard and the Alps) and helped to determine glacier changes in several key regions (e.g. elevation changes in the Himalaya and Greenland, changes in flow velocities in various regions worldwide).

The presentation will give an overview on the major achievements of the project (e.g. on the selected algorithms for product generation and error characterization) and the scientific results already obtained from the generated products.