1. Brief communication: Detection of glacier surge activity using cloud computing of Sentinel-1 radar data
- Author
-
Leclercq, Paul, Kääb, Andreas, Altena, Bas, Sub Dynamics Meteorology, Marine and Atmospheric Research, Sub Dynamics Meteorology, and Marine and Atmospheric Research
- Subjects
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences ,Backscatter ,0211 other engineering and technologies ,Climate change ,Cloud computing ,02 engineering and technology ,01 natural sciences ,law.invention ,law ,GE1-350 ,Surge ,Radar ,021101 geological & geomatics engineering ,0105 earth and related environmental sciences ,Earth-Surface Processes ,Water Science and Technology ,geography ,QE1-996.5 ,geography.geographical_feature_category ,business.industry ,Global Map ,Glacier ,Geology ,Snow ,Environmental sciences ,Climatology ,business - Abstract
For studying the flow of glaciers and their response to climate change it is important to detect glacier surges. Here, we compute within Google Earth Engine the normalized differences between winter maxima of Sentinel-1 C-band radar backscatter image stacks over subsequent years. We arrive at a global map of annual backscatter changes, which are for glaciers in most cases related to changed crevassing associated with surge-type activity. For our demonstration period 2018–2019 we detected 69 surging glaciers, with many of them not classified so far as surge type. Comparison with glacier surface velocities shows that we reliably find known surge activities. Our method can support operational monitoring of glacier surges, and some other special events such as large rock and snow avalanches.
- Published
- 2021