Disaggregating geodetic glacier mass balance to annual scale using remote-sensing proxies

Abstract

Decadal-scale, high-resolution geodetic measurements of glacier thinning have transformed our understanding of glacier response to climate change. Annual glacier mass balance can be estimated using remote-sensing proxies like snow-line altitude. These methods require field data for calibration, which are not available for most glaciers. Here we propose a method that combines multiple remotely-sensed proxies to obtain robust estimates of the annual glacier-wide balance using only remotely-sensed decadal-scale geodetic mass balance for calibration. The method is tested on Chhota Shigri, Argentière and Saint-Sorlin glaciers in the Himalaya and the Alps between 2001 and 2020, using four remotely-sensed proxies – the snow-line altitude, the minimum summer albedo over the glacier and two statistics of normalised difference snow index over the off-glacier area around the ablation zone. The reconstructed mass balance compares favourably with the corresponding glaciological field data (correlation coefficient 0.81 − 0.90, p < 0.001; root mean squared error 0.38 − 0.43 m w.e. a−1). The method presented may be useful to study interannual variability in mass balance on glaciers where no field data are available.