Dear GLIMS colleagues and other interested researchers/students:

For those checking email this afternoon:

Reminder: the GLIMS dinner/discussion is this evening, 6:30-7:30 discussion + appetizers, 7:30-9 PM dinner; Henry's Hunan Restaurant, 110 Natoma St., between New Montgomery and 2nd Street (beware, there are other Henry Hunans in town).  We have about 26 participants listed. We can go up to about 30 (we can cram up to 33 in, but it gets crowded).  We also have a skype-in option (technically untested with the cell-phone connections present there, but it will probably work); so far three people are planning to use Skype (others would need to give Greg Leonard your Skype name-- gleonard@email.arizona.edu).

We will not likely get to the full agenda listed previously, but we will do as much as we can.  Minimally, I want to discuss the following proposal for establishment of working groups.  These are just discussion points.Graham Cogley was mentioning some other discussion of ideas for a working group/workshop.

Working Groups:

Overarching goal:  Improve our understanding of error, precision and uncertainty in glacier measurements, especially of higher-level analysis beyond simple inventories; especially first and second derivatives of multi-temporal data.  Improve our confidence in downscaled regional climate models. Do all this in 2 years to be ready to have an improved impact on IPCC AR6. We should be able to answer questions such as: How rapidly are glaciers changing? Are the changes accelerating or slowing?  And then we need to have reliable and standardized means of error assessment, or at least a clear understanding of differences in different groups' error assessment approaches. 

GLIMS Working Group on Error and Uncertainty of Results: Origination and Propagation Analysis (GLIMS-EUROPA)

Premises for tonight's discussion:

1.     I have no interest in having working groups that basically does nothing solid.

2.     There should be a concrete, peer-reviewed product, at least one of which is a near-term manuscript (winter 2014).

3.     The paper(s) should reach some definite, implementable conclusions and have relevance to others doing GLIMS-type analysis.

4.     We will consider holding a GLIMS workshop oriented around the topic of uncertainty and error analysis in higher level satellite image analysis and data fusion incorporating dissimilar datasets.  As mentioned Graham or Frank Paul or others may have some further/other thoughts about this.  

5.     The timeframe should be such that an initial peer-reviewed product establishes the reality and functionality of the working group and produces something that is a genuine advance of error assessment protocol.  It should also be forward-looking to continue momentum.

SOMEBODY LEADS + Others

Confirmed members: Mike Demuth, Jeff Kargel, Roberto Furfaro, Greg Leonard, Michael Bishop, Umesh Haritashya (in no particular order)

Additional anticipated members: Andy Kääb, Bruce Raup, Graham Cogley, Etienne Berthier, Ivan Lopez?  Tobias Bolch?

1.     Multispectral and thermal image subgroup

a.     Material Boundaries (Mike Demuth + Bruce Raup + Jeff Kargel + Greg Leonard)

i.               Single time snapshot

ii.              Multitemporal, same sensor

iii.            Multitemporal, different sensors

b.     Surface motion (Andy Kääb, Umesh Haritashya, Ivan Lopez?-- has not been directly contacted yet)

i.               Multitemporal, same sensor

ii.              Multitemporal, different sensors

c.     Surface properties  (Jeff Kargel, Roberto Furfaro, Greg Leonard, Michael Bishop)

i.               Snow and ice grain size

ii.              Debris cover

iii.            Water

iv.            Morphology

2.     DEM subgroup—Tobias Bolch?-- has not been directly contacted yet.  Etienne Berthier, Greg Leonard, Jeff kargel

a.     Single snapshot, satellite system

b.     Multitemporal, same system

c.     Multitemporal, different satellite systems

d.     Multitemporal, satellite + conventional map

GLIMS Working Group on Ice-Covered Earth’s Climate Base (GLIMS-ICEClimB) 

SOMEBODY LEADS (Alan Gillespie?) + Andy Bush + Others

Probably some similar premises should hold.

 

Perhaps two main missions/subgroups:

1.     ALAN GILLESPIE: Promotion of weather station emplacement, and a standard GLIMS protocol for the instrumentation and emplacement strategy.  Dozens of glaciers that are not already benchmark glaciers, or benchmark glaciers if there is not already weather monitoring below, near and above the ELA.  They should include some of the same glaciers used for Mission #2 (below).  The weather stations can include complete AWS, but to make it practical for large numbers of glaciers it should include some basic low-cost weather data recorders, maybe some that can be thrown out of a helicopter????

2.     ANDY BUSH: Development of a uniform regional climate downscaling program to cover dozens of glaciers—benchmark glaciers and others that are the subject of Mission #1. 6-km downscale resolution is implementable without problem using the WRF code (Andy Bush). Other RCM codes? But whatever code(s) are used, it should be applied systematically with the same downscale architecture, same climate emissions scenario(s), same past/present/future dates of model computation, uniform in every way so that the results are directly comparable across the globe. 

Establish a group, then make up your own missions/sub-groups, title/acronym.  Just move something forward in the category of climate/weather relevant to glaciers.

Cheers,

Jeff

Jeffrey S. Kargel