Estimating Mass Balance of White Glacier using ICESat-2

Abstract

White Glacier is located on Axel Heiberg Island in Nunavut, Canada, and has had its mass balance actively monitored since 1960. Due to COVID-19 travel restrictions it not possible for researchers to travel to White Glacier and perform the measurements required. This results in gaps in data required to determine the mass balance for 2018-2020. In this study we aim to collect and process laser altimeter data to be interpolated to calculate an estimate of the Mass Balance of White Glacier. This study will be completed using a geodetic technique that utilizes the Ice Cloud and Elevation-2 (ICESat-2) satellite altimetry data. ICESat-2 is carrying ATLAS which is an Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter that is equipped with six laser beams divided into three pairs that measure lidar altimetry to derive surface height. The longitude, latitude, datetime, and land ice height values were extracted over the Expedition fjord region using MATLAB. The land ice tracks were brought into ArcGIS for analysis, three repeat tracks in the Expedition Fjord region were selected for analysis to determine the difference in elevation between the premelt seasons of 2019 and 2020 as well as one track comparing the premelt and melt seasons of 2019. These elevation differences will be interpolated as accumulation or ablation dependant on the location on the glacier and used to estimate mass balance.