Historical glacier length fluctuations in West Greenland

Knowledge of past glacier fluctuations provides insight into glacier dynamics and the sensitivity of glaciers to climate change. In addition, historical glacier fluctuations can be used to reconstruct past climate fluctuations and the contribution of glaciers to the sea-level rise observed since the middle of the 19th century. For many regions of the world information of glacier fluctuations over the past centuries has become available, mostly in the form of measured and reconstructed glacier length fluctuations. However, for the glacierized regions in the Arctic, information has remained scarce. As these regions contain the largest part of the world’s glacier area and volume, this lack of information hampers the reconstruction of the glacier contribution to sea-level rise.