Analysis of surface structures and thermal distribution of Grenzgletscher ablation area with multispectral and thermal imagery

Abstract

Due to climate change, glaciers and ice sheets are increasingly melting. Many glaciers in polar and subpolar regions as well the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheet are polythermal. Which arises questions about how a polythermal glacier reacts, when a shift from a polythermal regime to a temperate regime occurs. The largest polythermal glacier in the Alps is the Grenzgletscher, where the ablation zone shows typical surface structures for cold ice. This makes the Grenzgletscher a perfect study site to study a polythermal glacier under warming conditions and then extrapolate the findings to the arctic and subarctic region. The analysis of surface structures and thermal distribution at different locations on in the ablation zone of Grenzgletscher can be interpreted as studies under different climate conditions. By using multispectral and thermal imagery this thesis analyzed the surface of the ablation zone and tries to correlate the findings with the ice temperature. This analysis are important in understanding how a polythermal glacier adapts to warmer climate and what has to be considered in glaciological models