Recent elevation and velocity changes of Astrolabe Glacier, Terre Adelie, Antarctica

SPOT and Pléiades images acquired since 2002 are used to describe velocity and elevation changes on Astrolabe Glacier, East Antarctica. Multi-temporal pairs of images are used to generate velocity fields by automatically tracking surfaces features. Stereo-pairs are used to create DEMs. Using three DEMs (2003, 2007 and 2013), we describe a surprising surface elevation increase since 2002, that reached a mean rate of 1.8 m/yr between 2003 and 2007. Conversely, the velocity fields did not reveal any major change in velocity so the origin of the strong increase in elevation remains non elucidated