Articles | Volume 10, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-15-2016
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-15-2016
Research article
 | 
15 Jan 2016
Research article |  | 15 Jan 2016

Estimating supraglacial lake depth in West Greenland using Landsat 8 and comparison with other multispectral methods

A. Pope, T. A. Scambos, M. Moussavi, M. Tedesco, M. Willis, D. Shean, and S. Grigsby

Related authors

Project and Community Management in Polar Sciences – Challenges and Opportunities
Kirstin Werner, Yulia Zaika, Alexey K. Pavlov, Sven Lidström, Allen Pope, Renuka Badhe, Marlen Brückner, and Luisa Cristini
Adv. Geosci., 46, 25–43, https://doi.org/10.5194/adgeo-46-25-2019,https://doi.org/10.5194/adgeo-46-25-2019, 2019
Short summary

Related subject area

Remote Sensing
Radar-equivalent snowpack: reducing the number of snow layers while retaining their microwave properties and bulk snow mass
Julien Meloche, Nicolas R. Leroux, Benoit Montpetit, Vincent Vionnet, and Chris Derksen
The Cryosphere, 19, 2949–2962, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-2949-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-2949-2025, 2025
Short summary
New radar altimetry datasets of Greenland and Antarctic surface elevation, 1991–2012
Maya Raghunath Suryawanshi, Malcolm McMillan, Jennifer Maddalena, Fanny Piras, Jérémie Aublanc, Jean-Alexis Daguzé, Clara Grau, and Qi Huang
The Cryosphere, 19, 2855–2880, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-2855-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-2855-2025, 2025
Short summary
Evaluating sensitivity of optical snow grain size retrievals to radiative transfer models, shape parameters, and inversion techniques
James W. Dillon, Christopher P. Donahue, Evan N. Schehrer, and Kevin D. Hammonds
The Cryosphere, 19, 2913–2933, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-2913-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-2913-2025, 2025
Short summary
Detection and reconstruction of rock glacier kinematics over 24 years (2000–2024) from Landsat imagery
Diego Cusicanqui, Pascal Lacroix, Xavier Bodin, Benjamin Aubrey Robson, Andreas Kääb, and Shelley MacDonell
The Cryosphere, 19, 2559–2581, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-2559-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-2559-2025, 2025
Short summary
Brief communication: Not as dirty as they look, flawed airborne and satellite snow spectra
Edward H. Bair, Dar A. Roberts, David R. Thompson, Philip G. Brodrick, Brenton A. Wilder, Niklas Bohn, Christopher J. Crawford, Nimrod Carmon, Carrie M. Vuyovich, and Jeff Dozier
The Cryosphere, 19, 2315–2320, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-2315-2025,https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-2315-2025, 2025
Short summary

Cited articles

Arnold, N. S., Banwell, A. F., and Willis, I. C.: High-resolution modelling of the seasonal evolution of surface water storage on the Greenland Ice Sheet, The Cryosphere, 8, 1149–1160, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-8-1149-2014, 2014.
Banwell, A. F., MacAyeal, D. R., and Sergienko, O. V.: Breakup of the Larsen B Ice Shelf triggered by chain reaction drainage of supraglacial lakes, Geophys. Res. Lett., 40, 5872–5876, https://doi.org/10.1002/2013GL057694, 2013.
Banwell, A. F., Caballero, M., Arnold, N. S., Glasser, N., Cathles, L. M., and MacAyeal, D. R.: Supraglacial lakes on the Larsen B Ice Shelf, Antarctica, and at Paakitsoq, W. Greenland: a comparative study, Ann. Glaciol., 55, 1–8, 2014.
Barsi, J. A., Lee, K., Kvaran, G., Markham, B. L., and Pedelty, J. A.: The Spectral Response of the Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager, Remote Sens., 6, 10232–10251, https://doi.org/10.3390/rs61010232, 2014.
Berk, A., Anderson, G. P., Acharya, P. K., Bernstein, L. S., Muratov, L., Lee, J., Fox, M., Adler-Golden, S. M., Chetwynd, J. H., Hoke, M. L., Lockwood, R. B., Gardner, J. A., Cooley, T. W., Borel, C. C., and Lewis, P. E.: MODTRAN 5: a reformulated atmospheric band model with auxiliary species and practical multiple scattering options: update, edited by: Shen, S. S. and Lewis, P. E., 662–667, 2005.
Download
Short summary
Liquid water stored on the surface of ice sheets and glaciers, such as that in surface (supraglacial) lakes, plays a key role in the glacial hydrological system. Multispectral remote sensing can be used to detect lakes and estimate their depth. Here, we use in situ data to assess lake depth retrieval using the recently launched Landsat 8. We validate Landsat 8-derived depths and provide suggestions for future applications. We apply our method to a case study are in Greenland for summer 2014.
Share