Observing glacier elevation changes from spaceborne optical and radar sensors – an inter-comparison experiment using ASTER  and TanDEM-X data

Piermattei, Livia; Zemp, Michael; Sommer, Christian; Brun, Fanny; Braun, Matthias H.; Andreassen, Liss M.; Belart, Joaquín M. C.; Berthier, Etienne; Bhattacharya, Atanu; Boehm Vock, Laura; Bolch, Tobias; Dehecq, Amaury; Dussaillant, Inés; Falaschi, Daniel; Florentine, Caitlyn; Floricioiu, Dana; Ginzler, Christian; Guillet, Gregoire; Hugonnet, Romain; Huss, Matthias; Kääb, Andreas; King, Owen; Klug, Christoph; Knuth, Friedrich; Krieger, Lukas; La Frenierre, Jeff; McNabb, Robert; McNeil, Christopher; Prinz, Rainer; Sass, Louis; Seehaus, Thorsten; Shean, David; Treichler, Désirée; Wendt, Anja; Yang, Ruitang

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-3195-2024

Articles | Volume 18, issue 7

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-3195-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-3195-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 7

Research article

|

16 Jul 2024

Research article |

| 16 Jul 2024

Observing glacier elevation changes from spaceborne optical and radar sensors – an inter-comparison experiment using ASTER and TanDEM-X data

Livia Piermattei, Michael Zemp, Christian Sommer, Fanny Brun, Matthias H. Braun, Liss M. Andreassen, Joaquín M. C. Belart, Etienne Berthier, Atanu Bhattacharya, Laura Boehm Vock, Tobias Bolch, Amaury Dehecq, Inés Dussaillant, Daniel Falaschi, Caitlyn Florentine, Dana Floricioiu, Christian Ginzler, Gregoire Guillet, Romain Hugonnet, Matthias Huss, Andreas Kääb, Owen King, Christoph Klug, Friedrich Knuth, Lukas Krieger, Jeff La Frenierre, Robert McNabb, Christopher McNeil, Rainer Prinz, Louis Sass, Thorsten Seehaus, David Shean, Désirée Treichler, Anja Wendt, and Ruitang Yang

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-3195-2024-supplement

Data sets

Digital Elevation Model of Hintereis- and Kesselwandferner 08.10.2010 R. Prinz et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8359619

Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) 1 Arc-Second Global USGS https://doi.org/10.5066/F7PR7TFT

Copernicus DEM ESA and Airbus https://doi.org/10.5270/ESA-c5d3d65

Randolph Glacier Inventory - a dataset of global glacier outlines: version 6.0 RGI Consortium https://doi.org/10.7265/N5-RGI-60

Fluctuations of Glaciers Database WGMS https://doi.org/10.5904/wgms-fog-2021-05

Data Vestisen 2008-2020 L. M. Andreassen and H. Elvehøy https://doi.org/10.58059/9w4a-9r24

Regional Assessments of Glacier Mass Change (RAGMAC) experiment dataset L. Piermattei et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12620977

Model code and software

DEMs processed from a batch of ASTER L1A images using Ames Stereo Pipelines (ASP) F. Brun https://github.com/FannyBrun/ASTER_DEM_from_L1A# 75aster_dem_from_l1a

Short summary

Satellites have made it possible to observe glacier elevation changes from all around the world. In the present study, we compared the results produced from two different types of satellite data between different research groups and against validation measurements from aeroplanes. We found a large spread between individual results but showed that the group ensemble can be used to reliably estimate glacier elevation changes and related errors from satellite data.