Earth ID: 4053

Regional Assessments of Glacier Mass

Visualizations by Cindy Starr Released on November 29, 2013

In this image, which serves as Figure 4-8 in the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the size of the green circles depicts total area covered by glaciers in each region with the tidewater basin fractions [TW] shown separately in blue. The Randolph Glacier Inventory (RGI) regions, designated by the white number, are referenced in Table 4.2 in the IPCC report. The geographic locations of all glaciers, evident primarily in mountainous regions and high latitudes, are shown in yellow with their area increased to improve visibility. Glacier locations and areas were obtained from airborne and Landsat ETM+, ASTER or SPOT5 satellite imagery and are from the Randolph Glacier Inventory Version 2.0 (Arendt et al., 2012).

For additional information, refer to the paper available here.

Global distribution of glaciers (yellow) and area covered (size of the circle), sub-divided into the 19 RGI regions (white number) referenced in Table 4.2 of the IPCC report. The area portion covered by tidewater terminating (TW) glaciers in each region is shown in blue.

Visualization Credits

Cindy Starr (Global Science and Technology, Inc.): Lead Visualizer
Alex S Gardner (Graduate School of Geography, Clark University): Scientist
Georg Kaser (Institut fÃ¼r Meteorologie und Geophysik, UniversitÃ¤t Innsbruck): Scientist
Anthony A Arendt (Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska): Scientist
Laurence Schuler (ADNET Systems, Inc.): Project Support
Ian Jones (ADNET Systems, Inc.): Project Support

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

Science Paper:
Gardner, A. S., et al., 2013, A Consensus Estimate of Glacier Contributions to Sea Level Rise: 2003 to 2009, Science, Vol. 340 no. 6134 pp. 852-857.

Short URL to share this page:
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4053

Data Used:

also referred to as: Glacier Area by Region: Randolph Glacier Inventory 3.0 (Arendt et al., 2012)

Data Compilation

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Keywords:
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Cryosphere >> Glaciers/Ice Sheets
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Hydrosphere >> Glaciers/Ice Sheets
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Cryosphere >> Glaciers/Ice Sheets >> Glaciers
SVS >> Glaciers
NASA Science >> Earth

GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation: Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0