Current projects

Funding:

ESA

GIUZ PI:

F. Paul

Project PIs:

F. Paul

GIUZ Staff

Keywords:

Remote sensing, climate change initiative, glacier mapping, surface elevation change, glacier velocity

links

http://www.esa-glaciers-cci.org/

Geographic focus:

Worldwide

Glaciers_cci is contributing to the efforts of creating a globally complete glacier inventory as requested in action T2.1 by GCOS (2006). This includes data creation (glacier outlines) in selected and key regions as well as establishing a more consistent framework for glacier identification to improve the consistency among the available datasets. The project is also deriving elevation changes and velocity fields from remote sensing data to complement the information on global glacier changes obtained in the field.

Funding:

ESA

GIUZ PI:

T.Bolch

Project PIs:

T.Bolch

GIUZ Staff

Keywords:

Remote sensing, glacial lakes, climate hazards

Geographic focus:

The cryosphere in high elevation regions is a very sensitive indicator of climate change and meltwater from the cryosphere is a significant fraction of fresh water resources in many parts of the world, particularly in China and in the countries receiving waters from the Tibetan Plateau. Cryosphere and hydrology questions should be linked towards better science on the terrestrial water cycle across a range of spatial and temporal scales. This leads to the need of connecting regional and global analyses of water resources. Fully integrated use of satellite, ground observations and hydrological distributed models is necessary to support water resources management and to clarify the roles of the interactions between the land surface and the atmosphere over the Tibetan Plateau in the Asian monsoon system.
This project is part of an integrated response to the Dragon 4 Theme “Hydrology & Cryosphere” with the projects "Multi – source hydrological data products to monitor High Asian River Basins and regional water security” (MUSYCADHARB led X. Li and M. Menenti) and “Earth Observations tools for Water resource and quality monitoring in Yangtze wetlands" (EOWAQYWET, Y. Wang and H. Yesou).
Within this subproject will generate an (rock)glacier inventory and assess both area and volume changes for benchmark regions in High Mountain Asia (HMA) taking advantage of the synergies of European and Chinese optical and microwave space-borne observation systems.
Similar advantage will be taken
- to investigate the flow velocity of (rock)glaciers and their changes over time,
- to map snow cover and their evolution,
- to map permafrost and its evolution and assess the possibilities to map and monitor the active layer.
- We will assess temporal and regional trends of glacier elevation changes of entire HMA by altimetry missions.
- The generated data will be instrumental for forcing, calibration, validation and data assimilation in basin scale glacio-hydrological models.

Funding:

EU, implemented by ECMWF

GIUZ PI:

F. Paul, M. Zemp

Project PIs:

F. Paul, M. Zemp

GIUZ Staff

Keywords:

Remote sensing, Glacier ECV, glacier inventory, glacier elevation/mass change, GLIMS/WGMS, Climate Data Store (CDS)

links

Copernicus Climate Change Service

Glaciers distribution data from the Randolph Glacier Inventory for year 2000

Glaciers elevation and mass change data from 1850 to present from the Fluctuations of Glaciers Database

Geographic focus:

Worldwide

The C3S project at GIUZ is concerned with the ECV Glaciers and providing glacier information (multi-temporal outlines and elevation changes) as derived from satellite remote sensing data via the GLIMS and WGMS databases to the Copernicus Climate Data Store (CDS). The products are generated by well-established processing lines or brokered from other scientists based on the published literature. The WGMS is also contributing the mass balance observations  from its in-situ network. The C3S project is part of the 'Land Hydrology and Cryosphere' Lot that is managed by the company EODC in Vienna (Austria).