The glaciers in Peru are strongly affected by climate change and have shown significant ice loss in the last century. We present the first multi-temporal, countrywide quantification of glacier area and ice mass changes. A glacier area loss of −548.5 ± 65.7 km² (−29 %) and ice mass loss of −7.62 ± 1.05 Gt is obtained for the period 2000–2016. The ice loss rate increased towards the end of the observation period. The glacier changes revealed can be attributed to regional climatic changes and ENSO.

We present a long-term multisite electrical resistivity tomography monitoring network (more than 1000 datasets recorded from six mountain permafrost sites). Despite harsh and remote measurement conditions, the datasets are of good quality and show consistent spatio-temporal variations yielding significant added value to point-scale borehole information. Observed long-term trends are similar for all permafrost sites, showing ongoing permafrost thaw and ground ice loss due to climatic conditions.

In this study, we used a ground-penetrating radar technique to measure melting at high precision under Nivlisen, an ice shelf in central Dronning Maud Land, East Antarctica. We found that summer-warmed ocean surface waters can increase melting close to the ice shelf front. Our study shows the use of and need for measurements in the field to monitor Antarctica's coastal margins; these detailed variations in basal melting are not captured in satellite data but are vital to predict future changes.

We used a 1982–2015 time series of satellite observations to examine changes in surface reflectivity (albedo) of the Greenland Ice Sheet. We found notable decreases in albedo over most of the ice sheet margins in July and August, particularly over the west coast and between 2000 and 2015. The results indicate that significant melt now occurs in areas 50 to 100 m higher up the ice sheet relative to the early 1980s. The albedo decrease is consistent and covarying with modelled ice sheet mass loss.

The Antarctic Ice Sheet has expanded and retracted often in the past, but, so far, studies have not identified which environmental driver is most important: air temperature, snowfall, ocean conditions or global sea level. In a modeling study of 400 000 years of Antarctic Ice Sheet variability we isolated different drivers and found that no single driver dominates. Air temperature and sea level are most important and combine in a synergistic way, with important implications for future change.

We produced an 8-year, high-resolution DEM record for Pine Island Glacier (PIG), a site of substantial Antarctic mass loss in recent decades. We developed methods to study the spatiotemporal evolution of ice shelf basal melting, which is responsible for ~ 60 % of PIG mass loss. We present shelf-wide basal melt rates and document relative melt rates for kilometer-scale basal channels and keels, offering new indirect observations of ice–ocean interaction beneath a vulnerable ice shelf.

We have implemented a frontal ablation parameterization into the Open Global Glacier Model and have shown that inversion methods based on mass conservation systematically underestimate the mass turnover (and therefore the thickness) of tidewater glaciers when neglecting frontal ablation. This underestimation can rise up to 19 % on a regional scale. Not accounting for frontal ablation will have an impact on the estimate of the glaciers’ potential contribution to sea level rise.

Ice rises are important ice-sheet features that archive the ice sheet's history in their internal structure. Here we use a 3-D numerical ice-sheet model to simulate mechanisms that lead to changes in the geometry of the internal structure. We find that changes in snowfall result in much larger and faster changes than similar changes in ice-shelf geometry. This result is integral to fully unlocking the potential of ice rises as ice-dynamic archives and potential ice-core drilling sites.

We investigate the influence of ocean–atmosphere teleconnections on the start, end, and duration of snow cover in British Columbia, Canada. We do this using daily satellite imagery from 2002 to 2018 and assess the accuracy of our methods using reported snow cover at 60 weather stations. We found that there are very strong relationships that vary by region and elevation. This improves our understanding of snow cover distribution and could be used to predict snow cover from ocean–climate indices.

The specific surface area (SSA) of solid precipitation particles (PPs) includes detailed information of PP. This work is based on field measurement of SSA of PPs in Nagaoka, the city with the heaviest snowfall in Japan. The values of SSA strongly depend on wind speed (WS) and wet-bulb temperature (T_w) on the ground. An equation to empirically estimate the SSA of fresh PPs with WS and T_w was established and the equation successfully reproduced the fluctuation of SSA in Nagaoka.

We investigate thickness change of Bhutanese glaciers during 2004–2011 using repeat GPS surveys and satellite-based observations. The thinning rate of Lugge Glacier (LG) is > 3 times that of Thorthormi Glacier (TG). Numerical simulations of ice dynamics and surface mass balance (SMB) demonstrate that the rapid thinning of LG is driven by both negative SMB and dynamic thinning, while the thinning of TG is minimised by a longitudinally compressive flow regime.

Properties of suspended frazil ice and flocs in water of different salinities were measured in the lab using high-resolution images. It was found that freshwater frazil particles and flocs were larger than in saline water by ~13 % and 75 %, respectively. Both the growth rate of particles and the porosity of flocs decreased with salinity and ranged between 0.174 and 0.024 mm min⁻¹ and 86 % and 75 % for freshwater and 35 ‰ saline water, respectively.

Two large icebergs are about to break off from the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Rifting started several years ago and is now approaching its final phase. Satellite data and computer simulations show that over the past 2 decades, growth of the ice shelf has caused a build-up of forces within the ice, which culminated in its fracture. These natural changes in geometry coincided with large variations in flow speed, a process that is thought to be relevant for all Antarctic ice shelf margins.

We report three new subglacial lakes close to the ice sheet margin of West Greenland. The lakes drained and refilled once each between 2009 and 2017, with two lakes draining in < 1 month during August 2014 and August 2015. The 2015 drainage caused a ~ 1-month down-glacier slowdown in ice flow and flooded the foreland, significantly modifying the braided river and depositing up to 8 m of sediment. These subglacial lakes offer accessible targets for future investigations and exploration.