![]() ![]() The world's largest glaciers and glacier complexes are located in the Antarctic, Arctic and Patagonia. Using separate rankings for glaciers and glacier complexes, we find that the largest glacier complexes have areas on the order of tens of thousands of square kilometers whereas the largest glaciers are several thousands of square kilometers. It also depends on the availability of a homogenized global glacier inventory. glaciers that meet at ice divides such as ice caps and icefields. It depends on how a glacier is defined and mapped and also requires differentiating between a glacier and a glacier complex, i.e. We identify the largest glaciers in two domains: on each of the seven geographical continents and in the 19 first-order glacier regions defined by the Global Terrestrial Network for Glaciers. Despite this long history, there is no authoritative answer to the popular question: ‘Which glaciers are the largest in the world?’ Here, we present the first systematic assessment of this question and identify the largest glaciers in the world – distinct from the two ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica but including the glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula. As of August, 2013, the GLIMS Glacier Database contains approximately 70% of the contents of the RGI, by both glacier count and area.Glacier monitoring has been internationally coordinated for more than 125 years. ![]() This contribution discusses the status of the GLIMS Glacier Database and the merge of RGI data into GLIMS, showing how the merge is carried out. More data from the RGI, such as from Arctic Canada and the periphery of Greenland, are expected to be merged into GLIMS as resources at NSIDC allow and as sufficient metadata can be obtained. The New Zealand outlines came from the Randolph Glacier Inventory (RGI), a data set created with the express purpose of filling the geographic gaps in GLIMS to produce a globally complete map of glaciers. These outlines had significant overlap with existing outlines in the GLIMS database, necessitating new approaches to the merging process. New sets of glacier outlines, including 12000 outlines from the Western Himalaya and 3500 outlines from New Zealand, have recently been merged into GLIMS. Otherwise, outlines that are supposed to pertain to the same glacier will appear to be different glaciers, causing errors in summary statistics of the database, such as glacier count or area. As new glacier outlines are produced for glaciers which have already been mapped within GLIMS, we must ensure that each new outline is assigned the same GLIMS glacier ID as its previous outline. GLIMS is one of the most popular data sets at NSIDC, and a web-based map interface and web map services allow users to obtain the data at no cost. The Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) glacier database was built at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in 2005, and now contains outlines and metadata for 120,000 glaciers. ![]()
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