A glacier is defined as a perennial mass of ice, and possibly firn and snow, originating on the land surface from the recrystallization of snow or other forms of solid precipitation and showing evidence of past or present flow. There are several types of glaciers such as glacierets, mountain glaciers, valley glaciers and ice fields, as well as ice caps. Some glacier tongues reach into lakes or the sea, and can develop floating ice tongues or ice shelves. Glacier changes are recognized as independent and high-confidence natural indicators of climate change. Past, current and future glacier changes affect global sea level, the regional water cycle and local hazards.
This product consists of two data sets providing time series of glacier changes: 1. The glacier elevation change series, and 2. the glacier mass balance series. These data sets are an extract of the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) Fluctuations of Glaciers database.Both data layers are provided as ESRI shapefiles containing the location of each glacier label point in geographic coordinates (longitude and latitude in degrees) in the World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS84) datum and some general statistical information about each glacier. Both shapefiles come with one ancillary .csv file containing the individual glacier change series linked to the corresponding point shapefile through the World Glacier Monitoring Service identification number (WGMS ID).The mass balance series consist of usually continuous annual balance measurements. The elevation change series consist of multi-annual changes with sometimes overlapping survey periods. For combining mass balance and elevation change data in one regional plot, the elevation changes need to be converted to annual change rates and mass changes need to be converted to mm w.e.(water equivalent) using a density conversion factor of 850 kg m-.
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