CLIMATE CHANGE ANALYSIS BY REMOTE SENSING OF GLACIERS ~ Aditi R, 3rd year, B.E. Geoinformatics

Unpredictable weather, changing precipitation patterns, uncalled disasters – all these are various issues that our world is currently facing. There is a single root cause for all – Climate Change. Climate change is no more a problem of the future, but something that we can feel around us today, in various forms Causes of climate change are both anthropogenic and even natural, but the aim of this article is to understand how remote sensing and GIS technologies can help detect this climate change.

Glaciers – large moving mass of ice, are found majorly in the poles and in mountain ranges like the Himalayas, the Andes, the Alps etc. Glaciers are the primary indicators of climate change. Even the slightest change in climate is vastly depicted in glacial environments in the form of glacier retreat, ice melt, sea-level rise, wildlife and ecological imbalance and the likes Glacier retreat refers to the reduction in the area and volume extent of glaciers in a particular region over a span of some years. This is monitored by continuous time-series satellite data. The glacier boundary describes the extent of the glacier and glacier terminus refers to the endpoint of a glacier downhill, i e , the lowest elevation point, until where the glacier ice is present These two factors help in delineating glacial extent and using overlay analysis of different satellite images covering a time span of a few years, the glacier retreat can be estimated This in turn would describe the climate change impacts realized in that particular region

An instance of this is depicted in these two Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) images acquired on October 13, 2020 and January 17, 2021 respectively, showing glacier retreat in the yellow-marked regions.

Source: https://landsat.visibleearth.nasa.gov/

Glacial environments are not easily feasible to be studied physically, hence remote sensing of glaciers is a vital tool and the need of the hour Delineating glacial boundary in a satellite imagery with respect to other land features is an easy task, due to the high spectral reflectance of snow/ice Hence, remote sensing and GIS for glacier dynamics studies is a vital area of study to better understand climate change patterns, and move towards a safe future.

Archaeology using Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR)