Volume Changes of North American Glaciers by Repeat Airborne Profiling

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AbstractOPP-9876421HarrisonEchelmeyerThe main objective of this project is for the Principal Investigator to determine the present mass balance and volume changes, averaged over five years, of about seventy representative glaciers in Alaska, northwestern Canada, and a few in Washington. This area is one of the largest glaciated regions in the world outside the polar regions, but only five to six glaciers out of thousands have been regularly monitored and have long-term records. These balances will be determined by repeating the baseline elevation profiles on the glaciers. The mass balances will be examined in terms of the contribution of the glaciers to sea level rise to determine regional trends in climate change and any possible temporal trends. Historically, mass balances of glaciers and ice sheets are very difficult to measure. This difficulty is particularly true for mountain glaciers because of the complex mountain barriers and the wide variety of climate regimes. Furthermore, satellite rader altimetry has not been used to successfully measure the mass balance of these glaciers because of their large and irregular surface slopes and relatively small areas. An important objective of this project will be to determine the applicability and accuracy of airborne profiling to measure the annual mass balances by making repeated profiles on selected glaciers over the four years of this project.