Temporal flow variations of major outlet glaciers in Greenland using Landsat data

We derived flow velocity fields over the last decade for all outlet glaciers with a frontal width larger than 1 km along the Greenland coast using a feature tracking approach in Landsat imagery. The velocity fields were used to determine both the linear trend and the seasonal variation of the flow regime. Additionally, we map the advance or retreat of the frontal position for individual glaciers. In this paper we focused on two regions in West Greenland (Jakobshavn Isbræ) and Southeast Greenland (Køge Bugt). For the Jakobshavn Isbræ the frontal glacier area accelerated from 15 m/day in 1999 to over 30 m/day in 2011 and thereby retreated over 12 km. In the Køge Bugt region, some glaciers show a similar acceleration in flow velocity while some do not vary in flow velocity significantly.