The dynamics of seasonal snow ablation on six glaciers in central Spitsbergen (Dicksonland) were assessed by examining a set of Sentinel-2 satellite images covering the summer ablation season for the period 2016–19. All glaciers lost 80% or more of their surface snow cover during the studied ablation seasons. This bolsters the recently observed trend of local glacier thinning, even at higher altitudes. Snow ablation dynamics are highly dependent on the glaciers altitudes, their position relative to the prevailing wind direction and the exposure to insolation. The accumulation areas of the studied glaciers were delimited based on the overlap of the minimum extent of snow-covered areas in the four consecutive studied summer seasons. The high temporal and spatial resolutions of available images enabled a detailed description of the seasonal snow ablation dynamics. Moreover, an estimate of the average number of days with below threshold glacier snow cover was made. This study contributes to our understanding of recent processes and might further support the modelling of glacier melt and subsequent runoff.

中文翻译：

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来自 Sentinel-2 卫星图像的斯匹次卑尔根中部选定冰川消雪的季节性动态

通过检查一组涵盖 2016-19 年夏季消融季节的 Sentinel-2 卫星图像，评估了斯匹次卑尔根 (Dicksonland) 中部六个冰川的季节性积雪消融动态。在研究的消融季节，所有冰川都失去了 80% 或更多的表面积雪。这支持了最近观察到的局部冰川变薄的趋势，即使在更高的高度也是如此。雪消融动力学高度依赖于冰川高度、它们相对于盛行风向的位置以及暴露于日照下的情况。研究冰川的堆积区域是根据连续四个研究夏季的最小积雪面积的重叠来划分的。可用图像的高时间和空间分辨率能够详细描述季节性雪消融动态。此外，对低于阈值冰川积雪的平均天数进行了估计。这项研究有助于我们了解最近的过程，并可能进一步支持冰川融化和后续径流的建模。