UNLOCKING THE ARCHIVES: AN AUTOMATED PROCESSING PIPELINE FOR DECADAL-SCALE GLACIER MASS-BALANCE FROM HISTORICAL IMAGERY

We are developing an automated, open-source workflow to produce high-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) from archives of historical aerial and declassified satellite imagery. The resulting records of geodetic mass balance will be used to better understand glacier sensitivity to climate forcing on a regional scale. These results will also provide new constraints for mass balance models used to project future glacier response and impacts on downstream water resources.

Mountain glaciers have lost significant mass over the past century in response to a warming climate. However, these glaciers also display decadal variability, with multiple periods of both advance and retreat observed since the 1950s for glaciers in the Pacific Northwest. This variability is primarily driven by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a climate pattern which influences regional precipitation and temperature. Decadal-scale glacial response to this climate forcing remains poorly constrained over the past century, due to a lack of regionally representative long-term mass-balance measurements. Here we present initial results of decadal geodetic mass-balance from the 1960s to 1990s for glaciers in the Pacific Northwest.