Worldwide version-controlled database of glacier thickness observations
<p>Although worldwide inventories of glacier area have been coordinated internationally for several decades, a similar effort for glacier ice thicknesses was only initiated in 2013. Here, we present the third version of the Glacier Thickness Database (GlaThiDa v3), which includes 3 ...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Copernicus Publications
2020-11-01
|
| Series: | Earth System Science Data |
| Online Access: | https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/12/3039/2020/essd-12-3039-2020.pdf |
| Summary: | <p>Although worldwide inventories of glacier area have been coordinated
internationally for several decades, a similar effort for glacier ice
thicknesses was only initiated in 2013. Here, we present the third
version of the Glacier Thickness Database (GlaThiDa v3), which includes
3 854 279 thickness measurements distributed over
roughly 3000 glaciers worldwide. Overall, 14 % of
global glacier area is now within 1 km of a thickness
measurement (located on the same glacier) – a significant improvement
over GlaThiDa v2, which covered only 6 % of global glacier
area and only 1100 glaciers. Improvements in measurement
coverage increase the robustness of numerical interpolations and model
extrapolations, resulting in better estimates of regional to global
glacier volumes and their potential contributions to sea-level rise.</p>
<p>In this paper, we summarize the sources and compilation of glacier
thickness data and the spatial and temporal coverage of the resulting
database. In addition, we detail our use of open-source metadata formats
and software tools to describe the data, validate the data format and
content against this metadata description, and track changes to the data
following modern data management best practices. Archived versions of
GlaThiDa are available from the World Glacier Monitoring Service
(e.g., v3.1.0, from which this paper was generated:
<a href="https://doi.org/10.5904/wgms-glathida-2020-10">https://doi.org/10.5904/wgms-glathida-2020-10</a>;
<span class="cit" id="xref_altparen.1"><a href="#bib1.bibx30">GlaThiDa Consortium</a>, <a href="#bib1.bibx30">2020</a></span>), while the development version is
available on GitLab (<span class="uri">https://gitlab.com/wgms/glathida</span>, last access: 9 November 2020).</p> |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1866-3508 1866-3516 |