glenglat: Global englacial temperature database

Open-access database of englacial temperature measurements compiled from data submissions and published literature. It is developed on GitHub and published to Zenodo. The dataset is described in the following publication:

Mylène Jacquemart, Ethan Welty, Marcus Gastaldello, and Guillem Carcanade (2025). glenglat: A database of global englacial temperatures. Earth System Science Data Discussions. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-249

Dataset structure

The dataset adheres to the Frictionless Data Tabular Data Package specification. The metadata in datapackage.json describes, in detail, the contents of the tabular data files in the data folder:

source.csv: Description of each data source (either a personal communication or the reference to a published study).

borehole.csv: Description of each borehole (location, elevation, etc), linked to source.csv via source_id and less formally via source identifiers in notes.

profile.csv: Description of each profile (date, etc), linked to borehole.csv via borehole_id and to source.csv via source_id and less formally via source identifiers in notes.

measurement.csv: Description of each measurement (depth and temperature), linked to profile.csv via borehole_id and profile_id.

For boreholes with many profiles (e.g. from automated loggers), pairs of profile.csv and measurement.csv are stored separately in subfolders of data named {source.id}-{glacier}, where glacier is a simplified and kebab-cased version of the glacier name (e.g. flowers2022-little-kluane).

Supporting information

The folder sources, available on GitHub but omitted from dataset releases on Zenodo, contains subfolders (with names matching column source.id) with files that document how and from where the data was extracted.

Tables

Jump to: source · borehole · profile · measurement

source

Sources of information considered in the compilation of this database. Column names and categorical values closely follow the Citation Style Language (CSL) 1.0.2 specification. Names of people in non-Latin scripts are followed by a latinization in square brackets (e.g. В. С. Загороднов [V. S. Zagorodnov]) and non-English titles are followed by a translation in square brackets. The family name of Latin-script names is wrapped in curly braces when it is not the last word of the name (e.g. Emmanuel {Le Meur}, e.g. {Duan} Keqin) or the name ends in two or more unabbreviated words (e.g. Jon Ove {Hagen}). The family name of a Chinese name (and of the latinization) is wrapped in curly braces when it is not the first character.

name
type
description

id (required)
string
Unique identifier constructed from the first author's lowercase, latinized, family name and the publication year, followed as needed by a lowercase letter to ensure uniqueness (e.g. Загороднов 1981 → zagorodnov1981a).

author
string
Author names (optionally followed by their ORCID or contact email in parentheses) as a pipe-delimited list.

year (required)
year
Year of publication.

type (required)
string
Item type.- article-journal: Journal article- book: Book (if the entire book is relevant)- chapter: Book section- document: Document not fitting into any other category- dataset: Collection of data- map: Geographic map- paper-conference: Paper published in conference proceedings- personal-communication: Personal communication between individuals- speech: Presentation (talk, poster) at a conference- report: Report distributed by an institution- thesis-phd: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) thesis- thesis-msc: Master of Science (MSc) thesis- webpage: Website or page on a website

title (required)
string
Item title.

url
string
URL (DOI if available).

language (required)
string
Language as ISO 639-1 two-letter language code.- da: Danish- de: German- en: English- es: Spanish- fr: French- ja: Japanese- ko: Korean- ru: Russian- sv: Swedish- zh: Chinese

container_title
string
Title of the container (e.g. journal, book).

volume
integer
Volume number of the item or container.

issue
string
Issue number (e.g. 1) or range (e.g. 1-2) of the item or container, with an optional letter prefix (e.g. F1) or part number (e.g. 75pt2).

page
string
Page number (e.g. 1) or range (e.g. 1-2) of the item in the container, with an optional letter prefix (e.g. S1).

version
string
Version number (e.g. 1.0) of the item.

editor
string
Editor names (e.g. of the containing book) as a pipe-delimited list.

collection_title
string
Title of the collection (e.g. book series).

collection_number
string
Number (e.g. 1) or range (e.g. 1-2) in the collection (e.g. book series volume).

publisher
string
Publisher name.

borehole

Metadata about each borehole.

name
type
description

id (required)
integer
Unique identifier.

source_id (required)
string
Identifier of the source of the earliest temperature measurements. This is also the source of the borehole attributes unless otherwise stated in notes.

glacier_name (required)
string
Glacier or ice cap name (as reported).

glims_id
string
Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) glacier identifier.

location_origin (required)
string
Origin of location (latitude, longitude).- submitted: Provided in data submission- published: Reported as coordinates in original publication- digitized: Digitized from published map with complete axes- estimated: Estimated from published plot by comparing to a map (e.g. Google Maps, CalTopo)- guessed: Estimated with difficulty, for example by comparing elevation to a map (e.g. Google Maps, CalTopo)

latitude (required)
number [degree]
Latitude (EPSG 4326).

longitude (required)
number [degree]
Longitude (EPSG 4326).

elevation_origin (required)
string
Origin of elevation (elevation).- submitted: Provided in data submission- published: Reported as number in original publication- digitized: Digitized from published plot with complete axes- estimated: Estimated from elevation contours in published map- guessed: Estimated with difficulty, for example by comparing location (latitude, longitude) to a map of contemporary elevations (e.g. CalTopo, Google Maps)

elevation (required)
number [m]
Elevation above sea level.

mass_balance_area
string
Mass balance area.- ablation: Ablation area- equilibrium: Near the equilibrium line- accumulation: Accumulation area

label
string
Borehole name (e.g. as labeled on a plot).

date_min
date (%Y-%m-%d)
Begin date of drilling, or if not known precisely, the first possible date (e.g. 2019 → 2019-01-01).

date_max
date (%Y-%m-%d)
End date of drilling, or if not known precisely, the last possible date (e.g. 2019 → 2019-12-31).

drill_method
string
Drilling method.- mechanical: Push, percussion, rotary- thermal: Hot point, electrothermal, steam- combined: Mechanical and thermal

ice_depth
number [m]
Starting depth of continuous ice. Infinity (INF) indicates that only snow, firn, or intermittent ice was reached.

depth
number [m]
Total borehole depth (not including drilling in the underlying bed).

to_bed
boolean
Whether the borehole reached the glacier bed.

temperature_uncertainty
number [°C]
Estimated temperature uncertainty (as reported).

notes
string
Additional remarks about the study site, the borehole, or the measurements therein as a pipe-delimited list. Sources are referenced by source.id. Quality concerns are prefixed with '[flag]'.

curator
string
Names of people who added the data to the database, as a pipe-delimited list.

investigators
string
Names of people and/or agencies who performed the work, as a pipe-delimited list. Each entry is in the format 'person (agency; ...) {notes}', where only person or one agency is required. Person and agency may contain a latinized form in square brackets.

funding
string
Funding sources as a pipe-delimited list. Each entry is in the format 'funder [rorid] > award [number] url', where only funder is required and rorid is the funder's ROR (https://ror.org) ID (e.g. 01jtrvx49).

profile

Date and time of each measurement profile.

name
type
description

borehole_id (required)
integer
Borehole identifier.

id (required)
integer
Borehole profile identifier (starting from 1 for each borehole).

source_id (required)
string
Source identifier.

measurement_origin (required)
string
Origin of measurements (measurement.depth, measurement.temperature).- submitted: Provided as numbers in data submission- published: Numbers read from original publication- digitized-discrete: Digitized with Plot Digitizer from discrete points of depth versus temperature- digitized-continuous: Digitized with Plot Digitizer from a continuous data source (e.g. line plot of depth versus temperature)

date_min
date (%Y-%m-%d)
Measurement date, or if not known precisely, the first possible date (e.g. 2019 → 2019-01-01).

date_max (required)
date (%Y-%m-%d)
Measurement date, or if not known precisely, the last possible date (e.g. 2019 → 2019-12-31).

time
time (%H:%M:%S)
Measurement time.

utc_offset
number [h]
Time offset relative to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

equilibrium
string
Whether and how reported temperatures equilibrated following drilling.- true: Equilibrium was measured- estimated: Equilibrium was estimated (typically by extrapolation)- false: Equilibrium was not reached

notes
string
Additional remarks about the profile or the measurements therein as a pipe-delimited list. Sources are referenced by source.id. Quality concerns are prefixed with '[flag]'.

measurement

Temperature measurements with depth.

name
type
description

borehole_id (required)
integer
Borehole identifier.

profile_id (required)
integer
Borehole profile identifier.

depth (required)
number [m]
Depth below the glacier surface.

temperature (required)
number [°C]
Temperature.