Preprints
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-249
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-249
26 Aug 2024
 | 26 Aug 2024
Status: this preprint is currently under review for the journal ESSD.

glenglat: A database of global englacial temperatures

Mylène Jacquemart and Ethan Welty

Abstract. Measurements of englacial temperatures have been collected since the earliest years of glaciology, with the first measurements dating back to the mid-19th century. Although temperature is a defining characteristic of any glacier – and is notoriously laborious to collect – no effort had yet been made to gather all existing measurements. In an attempt to make existing ice temperature data more accessible, we present glenglat, a global database of englacial temperature measurements, compiled from 241 literature sources and nine data submissions and composed of 1142163 measurements of depth and temperature from 690 boreholes located on 186 glaciers outside of the ice sheets. Alongside recent compilations for the ice sheets (Løkkegaard et al., 2023; Vandecrux et al., 2023), most published englacial temperature measurements are now readily available to the research community.

Here, we review the variety of glacier thermal regimes that have been measured and summarize the spatial, temporal, and climatic coverage of measurements relative to global glacierized area. Measurements of cold and polythermal glacier ice greatly outnumber those of temperate ice. Overall, temperature has been measured in fewer than 1 ‰ of all glaciers, and only 20 % of borehole locations have been measured more than once, highlighting the large potential to investigate changing temperature conditions by repeating past measurements. The database is developed on GitHub (www.github.com/mjacqu/glenglat) and published to Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13334175; Jacquemart and Welty, 2024). It consists of four relational tables and detailed machine-actionable and human-readable metadata. The GitHub repository also provides submission instructions (including a spreadsheet template and validation tools), in the hopes that investigators can help us keep glenglat complete and current going forward. We hope that glenglat can help improve our understanding of glacier thermal regimes, help refine glacier thermo-dynamic models, or shed insight into hazardous glacier instabilities in a warming world.

Publisher's note: Copernicus Publications remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims made in the text, published maps, institutional affiliations, or any other geographical representation in this preprint. The responsibility to include appropriate place names lies with the authors.
Mylène Jacquemart and Ethan Welty

Status: final response (author comments only)

Comment types: AC – author | RC – referee | CC – community | EC – editor | CEC – chief editor | : Report abuse
  • AC1: 'Changes implemented during editorial review essd-2024-249', Mylene Jacquemart, 26 Aug 2024
  • RC1: 'Comment on essd-2024-249', William Colgan, 19 Sep 2024
  • RC2: 'Comment on essd-2024-249', Martin Hoelzle, 01 Oct 2024
Mylène Jacquemart and Ethan Welty

Data sets

glenglat: Global englacial temperature database Mylène Jacquemart and Ethan Welty https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13334175

Mylène Jacquemart and Ethan Welty

Viewed

Total article views: 410 (including HTML, PDF, and XML)
HTML PDF XML Total BibTeX EndNote
299 84 27 410 3 2
  • HTML: 299
  • PDF: 84
  • XML: 27
  • Total: 410
  • BibTeX: 3
  • EndNote: 2
Views and downloads (calculated since 26 Aug 2024)
Cumulative views and downloads (calculated since 26 Aug 2024)

Viewed (geographical distribution)

Total article views: 394 (including HTML, PDF, and XML) Thereof 394 with geography defined and 0 with unknown origin.
Country # Views %
  • 1
1
 
 
 
 
Latest update: 09 Oct 2024
Download
Short summary
We present glenglat, a database that contains measurements of ice temperature from 184 glaciers measured in 689 boreholes between 1842 and 2023. Even though ice temperature is a defining characteristic of any glacier, such measurements have been conducted on less than 1 ‰ of all glaciers globally. Our database permits, for the first time, to investigate glacier temperature distributions at global or regional scales for the first time.
Altmetrics