The World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) was started in 1986, combining the two former services PSFG (Permanent Service on Fluctuations of Glaciers) and TTS/WGI (Temporal Technical Secretary/World Glacier Inventory).
WGMS "collects standardised observations on changes in mass, volume, area and length of glaciers with time (glacier fluctuations), as well as statistical information on the distribution of perennial surface ice in space (glacier inventories). Such glacier fluctuation and inventory data are high priority key variables in climate system monitoring; they form a basis for hydrological modelling with respect to possible effects of atmospheric warming, and provide fundamental information in glaciology, glacial geomorphology and quaternary geology."[1]
External links
World Glacier Monitoring Service
Fluctuations of Glaciers VII, 1990-1995
George Monbiot, The Guardian, May 10, 2005, "Junk science:David Bellamy's inaccurate and selective figures on glacier shrinkage are a boon to climate change deniers"
The Glacier Studies Project, a part of the U.S. Geological Survey's contribution to the national effort, is directed at studying changes in the glacier component of the Earth's cryosphere, one of the four elements of the geosphere.
Glaciers are important indicators of global climate change because of their response, both areally and volumetrically, to changes in regional and global climate.
Allison, Ian, and Peterson, J.A., 1989, Glaciers of Iran Jaya, Indonesia (H-1), and Chinn, T.J., 1989, Glaciers of New Zealand (H-2); in Williams, R.S., Jr., and Ferrigno, J.G., editors, Satellite image atlas of glaciers of the world: U.S. Professional Paper 1386-H (Glaciers of Irian Jaya, Indonesia, and New Zealand), 48 p.
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