The geodetic mass balance of Eyjafjallajökull ice cap for 1945–2014: processing guidelines and relation to climate

Publisher's version (útgefin grein)
Mass-balance measurements of Icelandic glaciers are sparse through the 20th century. However, the large archive of stereo images available allows estimates of glacier-wide mass balance in decadal time steps since 1945. Combined with climate records, they provide further insight into glacier-climate relationship. This study presents a workflow to process aerial photographs (1945-1995), spy satellite imagery (1977-1980) and modern satellite stereo images (since 2000) using photogrammetric techniques and robust statistics in a highly automated, open-source pipeline to retrieve seasonally corrected, decadal glacier-wide geodetic mass balances. In our test area, Eyjafjallajökull (S-Iceland, ~70 km2), we obtain a mass balance of
This study was funded by the University of Iceland (UI) Research Fund. Collaboration and travels between IES and LEGOS were funded by the Jules Verne research fund. We thank David Shean and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments, which greatly improved the manuscript. We thank Carsten Kristinsson at LMÍ for scanning the aerial photographs, Oleg Alexandrov for his helpful tips and advice on ASP, Luc Girod for his help in the MicMac forum and Deirdre Clark and Ken Moxham for the Englishlanguage editing of the manuscript. Pléiades images were acquired at research price thanks to the CNES ISIS program (http://www.isis-cnes.fr). This study uses the lidar mapping of the glaciers in Iceland, funded by the Icelandic Research Fund, the Landsvirkjun research fund, the Icelandic Road Administration, the Reykjavík Energy Environmental and Energy Research Fund, the Klima-og Luftgruppen research fund of the Nordic Council of Ministers, the Vatnajökull National Park, the organization Friends of Vatnajökull, LMÍ, IMO and the UI research fund. This study uses the GLIMS database of the outlines of Icelandic glaciers. E.B. acknowledges support from the French Space Agency (CNES) through the TOSCA program.