Dense Glacial Termini Time Series Analysis: Insights from Calving Front Machine (CALFIN)

Abstract:

Recent developments in the field of automated calving front extraction allow for high spatio-temporal resolution analysis of Greenlandic glaciers. Specifically, we present developments from the Calving Front Machine (CALFIN) dataset. The dataset provides automatically generated positions from Landsat imagery, from 1972 to June 2020. This dataset provides sub-seasonal constraints on glacial evolution for 80+ basins. With the publication of this dataset, we now demonstrate the greater feasibility of conducting high level analyses of both long time series and sub-seasonal changes in Greenland Ice Sheet’s marine-terminating glacial termini positions.

We focus attention towards a basic analysis of CALFIN data, and demonstrate its potential usage in applications such as modeling. The scope of the analysis covers metrics derived from the glacial termini location polyline and ocean mask polygon outputs of CALFIN. These include area changes, centerline length changes, and efforts to automatically detect calving events. We also compare and validate CALFIN data against existing calving front datasets, including those from ESA’s Climate Change Initiative, PROMICE, MEaSUREs, and others.

We welcome any critiques, suggestions, or questions regarding the dataset and/or our methods. This work was conducted as a collaboration between NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California, Irvine.