Team: Polar and Mountain Regions

Polar and mountain regions are among the least densely populated areas in the world. Despite their low population density, they are of utmost importance for the global climate system, sea-level rise and water availability. The team analyses occurring changes in these regions by evaluating extensive remote sensing data, often using long time series from various sensors – including multispectral, radar and passive microwave data – as a basis. The aim of this research is to quantify the impacts of climate change on these sensitive ecosystems and to assess their consequences for nature and society.

In the Arctic, particularly on the Greenland ice sheet, and in Antarctica, dynamic changes in glaciers and ice shelves are being investigated. In Greenland and Antarctica, supraglacial lakes play a significant role, as their occurrence and seasonal variation serve as direct indicators of the intensity of ice melt, and their existence can lead to additional runoff that erodes the ice from below. By analysing radar satellite imagery and cross-referencing it with other remote sensing data, time series of glaciological parameters—such as glacier extent, glacier movement, shelf ice fronts, supraglacial lakes, elevation changes and mass balances—are generated that are as long and high-resolution as possible. Analysis of this data enables well-founded conclusions to be drawn about glacier and ice shelf development over the past decades and provides a basis for forecasting future developments in the face of ongoing global warming.