Latest Glacier Mass Balance Data

World Glacier Monitoring Service

Figure 1: Mean annual mass balance of reference glaciers. Climate change related trend analysis is, in the ideal case, based on long-term measurement series. Continuous glaciological mass balance records for more than 30 continued observation years are now available for a set of 40 ‘reference‘ glaciers. These glaciers have well-documented and long-term mass balance programs based on the direct glaciological method and are not dominated by non-climatic drivers such as calving or surge dynamics. (See here for more background.)

Figure 2: Mean cumulative mass balance of all reported glaciers (blue line) and the reference glaciers (red line).

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