Dear friends and colleagues in the glaciological community (and apologies for cross-posting),
A recently formed working group led by the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) aims to improve regional glacier mass balance estimates through the integration and inter-comparison of glaciological and geodetic mass balance estimates available in the WGMS Fluctuations of Glaciers database. The final product will improve upon the IPCC AR5 estimates of global glacier loss and will contribute to the observation-based glacier change estimates for the upcoming IPCC AR6 report.
The WGMS database currently reports geodetic balance estimates for just seven glaciers in Canada. To increase the representation of Canada's glaciers in this community initiative, we are requesting submissions of glacier volume change estimates in Canadian by June 30, 2018.
If you are able to contribute to this initiative, please reply with the following details for each geodetic balance estimate:
1) Glacier ID (preferably Randolph Glacier Inventory ID (RGI 6.0) or WGMS ID)
2) Time period (i.e. acquisition dates of DEM source data)
3) Glacier areas, or area change, over time period
4a) Estimated volume change (preferred), OR
4b) Estimated mass change with a description of volume-to-mass conversion method applied
5) Latitude and longitude
6) Contributor name(s), affiliation(s), and associated references
Please note that we are looking for glacier-wide estimates (including larger glacier systems such as ice caps or ice fields) but are not able to consume regional averages.
Assistance is available to help with data entry and submission to WGMS, such as assigning glacier IDs from the Randolph Glacier Inventory in geodatabases. If you would like help with submission please contact Laura Thomson (lthomson@sfu.ca) with a description of your dataset.
We understand that some datasets may not yet be available, or are awaiting publication, however we would very much like to encourage the submission of previously published databases towards this initiative.
Thank you and with warm regards,
Laura Thomson,
on behalf of the WGMS Regional Mass Balance Estimates Working Group
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Laura Thomson
Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Earth Sciences
Simon Fraser University
Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Earth Sciences
Simon Fraser University
