Articles | Volume 18, issue 2
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-889-2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-889-2024
Brief communication
 | 
27 Feb 2024
Brief communication |  | 27 Feb 2024

Brief communication: Recent estimates of glacier mass loss for western North America from laser altimetry

Brian Menounos, Alex Gardner, Caitlyn Florentine, and Andrew Fountain

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Cited articles

Abdullahi, S., Wessel, B., Huber, M., Wendleder, A., Roth, A., and Kuenzer, C.: Estimating Penetration-Related X-Band InSAR Elevation Bias: A Study over the Greenland Ice Sheet, Remote Sens., 11, 2903, https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11242903, 2019. 
Anderson, S. and Radić, V.: Identification of local water resource vulnerability to rapid deglaciation in Alberta, Nat. Clim. Chang., 10, 933–938, 2020. 
Bevington, A. and Menounos, B.: Accelerated change in the glaciated environments of western Canada revealed through trend analysis of optical satellite imagery, Remote Sens. Environ., 270, 112862, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2021.112862, 2022. 
Enderlin, E. M., Elkin, C. M., Gendreau, M., Marshall, H. P., O'Neel, S., McNeil, C., Florentine, C., and Sass, L.: Uncertainty of ICESat-2 ATL06- and ATL08-derived snow depths for glacierized and vegetated mountain regions, Remote Sens. Environ., 283, 113307, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2022.113307, 2022. 
Farinotti, D., Huss, M., Fürst, J. J., Landmann, J., Machguth, H., Maussion, F., and Pandit, A.: A consensus estimate for the ice thickness distribution of all glaciers on Earth, Nat. Geosci., 12, 168–173, 2019. 
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Short summary
Glaciers in western North American outside of Alaska are often overlooked in global studies because their potential to contribute to changes in sea level is small. Nonetheless, these glaciers represent important sources of freshwater, especially during times of drought. We show that these glaciers lost mass at a rate of about 12 Gt yr-1 for about the period 2013–2021;  the rate of mass loss over the period 2018–2022 was similar. 
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