The Greenland ice sheet is a large and complex system, with many different subsystems that are governed by their inherent dynamics, as well as affected commonly by climatic warming. Water - supra glacial, englacial and subglacial - plays a significant and no-yet-well understood role in many geophysical processes associated with the advance and retreat of the outlet glaciers of the Greenland ice sheet, and in melt processes which are furthered by climatic warming. Remote-sensing observations with novel satellite systems such as CryoSat, ICESat and ICESat-2 and design of their instrumentation are in part driven by measurement requirements of capturing changes in a Greenland outlet glacier like Jakobshavns Isbrae. Spatial variability at several scales, nonlinearity of the system, and spatial surface roughness play a large role in this context. The focus of the presentation will be on spatial statistical approaches developed for analysis of ice observations, and on the role of statistics in bridging Earth Observation, environmental modeling and geophysical analysis.

Keywords: Spatial statistics; Satellite remote sensing; Geophysics; Hydrology - Cryosphere

Biography: Ute Herzfeld is a mathematician working in spatial statistics and geostatistics applied to remote sensing technology and observations of the cryosphere and to analysis of geophysical processes. The speaker obtained a doctoral degree in mathematics at the University of Mainz, Germany, in 1986 and currently is a Research Professor at the Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering and a Senior Scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, USA.