Validation of the Surface Velocity Field of Mountain Glaciers from Its_Live V2 with in Situ GPS Data

Glacier velocity is an important parameter that provides insight into the dynamic behavior of glaciers and their response to climate change. The NASA MEaSUREs Intermission Time Series of Land Ice Velocity and Elevation (ITS_LIVE) project provides global glacier surface velocities. However, the accuracy of glacier velocity obtained from ITS_LIVE Version 2 (V2) has yet to be fully validated over mountain glaciers. In this study, we validated the ITS_LIVE V2 against in-situ GPS data at three locations: the Grosser Aletsch Glacier in Switzerland, as well as the Kaskawulsh and Lowell Glaciers in the Yukon region, Canada. We compared the ITS_LIVE V2 and GPS datasets by spatially and temporally aligning them and applying various statistical metrics. For future work we plan to expand the validation analysis for additional locations and time periods.