Contributing to the Surface Elevation Timeline of Jakobshavn Isbrae

The Greenland Ice Sheet has been steadily losing mass, and has raised global sea level by 13.7 mm from 1972 to 2018 (half within in the last 8 years). Data obtained in the 1970s showed a major and steady recession, however, digital information between the 40's and the introduction of satellites has not been available. In order to better understand the contribution that glaciers have to sea level rises and how climate change impacts those changes, we digitized and analyzed film negatives from a flight campaign from 1985. Jakobshavn Isbrae, is the fastest flowing glacier in the world. We used QGIS, to georeferece the images and digitize the contour elevations of the orthorectified photos (corrected lens curvature, Earth terrain and curvature of the Earth). Then, we put the images through a process called interpolation, more specifically kriging which can guess the value of the unknown elevations in between the contour lines. This gave us a digital elevation model, which showed us the difference of surface mass loss of 1985. Finally we gathered the results from ARTICDEM 2020 to compare the difference between surface elevation of 1985 and current the data of 2020.. These results will help us better understand the rate at which this glacier is losing mass, thus contributing to global sea level rises.