DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18674388
title: Greenland Ice Melange Characteristics Timeseries

description: File Organization:

Ice melange characteristics for 14 sites around Greenland. Each site is assigned a 3-letter abbreviation, with the corresponding Greenlandic site name (if available), common site name in glaciology publications, and Greenland Polar Stereo Northing and Easting (X,Y in EPSG3413) provided in the GrIS-melange-sites-key.csv. All coordinates provided in the files are in EPSG3413 unless otherwise noted.

For each site, data are found in subdirectories corresponding to each file type. All zipped data files and the uncompressed contents contain the site abbreviations to faciliate file identification. The contents of each .zip file are as follows:

iceberg-distribution-subsets:

Timestamped CSVs containing the DEM-derived iceberg counts for each iceberg size class, partitioned into bins extending from the seaward limit to the inland limit of the site's melange outline. The timestamp in the file name is in YYYYMMDD format. The first two columns are the iceberg surface area (m^2) and the width of the surface area bin (m^2) that define the iceberg size classes. Subsequent columns contains the estimated iceberg count for each iceberg size class within a 1000 m-wide (1500 m-wide for ZIM) bin with the centroid coordinates specified in the header (X,Y in EPSG3413). The same iceberg size classes and bins are used for all subsetted size distribution CSVs for a site.

 

melange-characteristic-timeseries: 

Seasonal thickness, packing density, and speed profiles for each year with available data are contained within files with corresponding names. The first two columns specify the year and the 3-letter abbrevation for each season (DJF = December-February, MAM = March-May, JJA = Junes - August, and SON = September - November). Only years and seasons with DEMs are included. Subsequent columns include the binned thickness (m), packing density (%), or speed (m/d) based on the file name, starting from the terminus and moving towards the seaward melange limit. NaNs fill data gaps so that all profiles are the same length. The header indicates the centerline distance of the bin centroid relative to the bin that overlaps the terminus.

The seasonal buttressing file contains the terminus bin thickness (m), packing density (fraction), strainrate (/d), and two buttressing estimates (N/m) for each season with a DEM. The first two columns specify the year and season, as in the profile CSVs. NaNs indicate no data were available for that year and season.

 

melange-outline:

The maximum melange extent used to define the limits of each study site.

 

centerline_1000m-interval (centerline_1500m-interval for ZIM):

The approximate centerline of the site used to create the flow-following reference frame for the thickness, packing density, speed, and strain rate estimates and the iceberg size distribution profiles.

 

termini_2019-2023:

Manual terminus delineations from Landsat 8/9 and Sentinel-2 images from 2019-2023. Termini were delineated using GEEDiT (https://liverpoolgee.wordpress.com/geedit-geedit-reviewer/). For each month with available imagery, the cloud-free image with the acquisition date closest to the monthly mid-date was used for delineation.

 

ArcticDEMtermini_2011-2023:

Manual terminus delineations from all cloud-free ArcticDEM strips used in the analysis. Termini were delineated in Matlab using the built-in drawpolyline function. Termini are cropped to the melange-outline for consistency.

 

Code Availability:

The codes used to generate, process, and analyze these datasets at the time of data archival are available at

Ellyn Enderlin, Liu, J., & Kopera, M. (2026). ellynenderlin/melange-characterization: journal submission release (v0.1.3). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18462166

and are in continued development at

https://github.com/ellynenderlin/melange-characterization