Swisswide Glacier Mass Balance (release 2023)

Measurements of annual glacier mass balances are acquired on ca. 20 Swiss glaciers. In order to infer swisswide ice volume change and, thus, overall glacier mass change, the in situ observations need to be extrapolated to all ca. 1400 glaciers. This is achieved by combining locally measured annual glacier mass balance with long-term geodetic volume change available for all glaciers, also taking into account temporal changes in glacier area. This data set presents multi-decadal time series of regionally aggregated (all Swiss glaciers, main hydrological catchments) glacier mass balance, volume and area, and also allows assessing the relative change in glacier ice volume from year to year.