Ice on glaciers and ice sheets may melt and pond on ice surfaces in summer months. Detection and observation of these meltwater ponds is important for understanding glaciers and ice sheets, and satellite imagery has been used in previous work. However, image-based methods struggle with deep water, so we used data from the Ice, Clouds, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) and the Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) to demonstrate the potential for lidar depth monitoring.

Glacial algal blooms play a significant role in darkening the Greenland Ice Sheet during summertime. The dark pigments generated by glacial algae could substantially reduce the bare ice albedo and thereby enhance surface melt. We used satellite data to map the spatial distribution of glacial algae and characterized the seasonal growth pattern and interannual trends of glacial algae in southwestern Greenland. Our study is important for bridging microbial activities with ice sheet mass balance.

An extensive aerogeophysical survey including two active subglacial lakes was conducted over David Glacier, Antarctica. Laser altimetry shows that the lakes were at a highstand, while ice-penetrating radar has no unique signature for the lakes when compared to the broader basal environment. This suggests that active subglacial lakes are more likely to be part of a distributed subglacial hydrological system than to be discrete reservoirs, which has implications for future surveys and drilling.

The grounding zone is where grounded ice begins to float and is the boundary at which the ocean has the most significant influence on the inland ice sheet. Here, we present the results of mapping the grounding zone of Antarctic ice shelves from CryoSat-2 radar altimetry. We found good agreement with previous methods that mapped the grounding zone. We also managed to map areas of Support Force Glacier and the Doake Ice Rumples (Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf), which were previously incompletely mapped.