IACS Working Group on the delineation of glaciers, ice sheets, and ice sheet basins

Project supported by the International Association of Cryospheric Sciences (IACS).

Goals

This Working Group aims to bring together the glacier and ice sheet community to find common ground on defining the domains (ice sheet & glacier masks) best used in glacier and ice sheet change assessments and modeling. Peripheral glaciers are included in some and excluded in some ice sheet mass change assessments. They are also the focus of non-ice-sheet glacier mass balance assessments. There is a need for clear separation of ice sheets and glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland to avoid double-counting, or omissions when estimates are combined in global assessments, such as in IPCC.

See:

• CRYOLIST announcement
• Proposal

Updates

To stay up-to-date with existing and new discussions, click on the watch button near the top of this page and then select All Activity or Custom > Discussions (and Issues). You can then unsubscribe from any individual conversation if it is not relevant to you.

There will also be occasional emails to emails on the Team Member spreadsheet.

Work to day can be seen on the GitHub discussions and the project Google Drive containing,

• Team member spreadsheet
• Meeting minutes and video recordings
• Other things TBD

How to join this project

• Add your details to the Team Member spreadsheet.
• Create a GitHub account and Click on the watch button near the top of this page and then select All Activity or Custom > Discussions (and Issues).

Organization

• Issues is where individuals or smaller groups or teams will work on specific actionable items, possibly linked to specific data features or code.

• Zoom meetings will occur occasionally and as needed and recordings shouldbe archived in the Google Drive.

In person meetings will occur when possible (e.g., at EGU).

Working with GitHub

Github might feel overwhelming at first, but fear not! We won't use it for computer code only, but as a collaborative project management tool.

• Please read: Not just for programmers: How GitHub can accelerate collaborative and reproducible research.
• Documents can be edited via the web interface, without using git. For example, to edit this document, click the pen icon at the top right corner of the text (not top right of page), then select the Commit changes... button.

Status

Deliverable 1

• D1 Milestone: Review report outlining the current situation, extracting the relevant information and suspected double counting in previous studies and IPCC report and proposed solutions to improve the situation.

Motivation