Glacier Mass Balance and Regime: Data of Measurements and ...

PREFACEThe study of glacier fluctuations is relevant to an understanding of climate and climate change overtemporal scales from years to centuries, and at spatial scales from regions to the global domain. It isinternationally recognized that mountain and subpolar glaciers are substantional contributors to watercycle. The IPCC-1995 and IPCC-2000 have shown that glaciers contribute up to 20% to sea level riseover the previous century. Still glaciological data are not been widely used in hydrology and for climatemonitoring. One important obstacle is that observational data are not generally accessible to thescientific community in a form convenient for modeling and analysis. The raw data come from manysources and publications, available to very few people.With the publication of this Occasional Paper, which is also supported by the data in electronic form, thetime series of main parameters of glacier regime is available for use in the climate and hydrologicalcommunities and other scientific disciplines. The data have undergone quality control, and have beencleared of many errors. The data are presented in comparable terms and dimensions. This OccasionalPaper is not only a data collection, but a global analysis of the regime of mountain and subpolar glaciersin connections with present-day climate, water balance, other environmental changes. These data shouldbe used as the input to models in hydrology, geomorphology, climatology and paleoclimatology. Weconsider this publication as one of INSTAAR's contribution to United Nations Year of Mountains, to becelebrated during 2002.Professor James P. M. SyvitskiDirector, INSTAAR8