The Impact of Glacier Surface Temperature on the Glacier Retreat of Ağrı Mountain

Ağrı ice cap is the biggest glacier in Turkey, but there are only a few published studies on Ağrı glacier. Many of them are focused on the spatial changes of the glacier detected by temporal data. In addition to the spatiotemporal changes of glacier, the main contribution of this study is to investigate the relation between Glacier Surface Temperature Anomalies (GSTA) and glacier retreat. The study was conducted in two steps by using Landsat TM 4–5 and Landsat 8 Oli satellite data. In the first step, the glacier boundaries were delineated with both band ratio technique and Normalize Difference Snow Index for each year and the spatiotemporal analysis is performed. In the second step, GSTA were calculated by using thermal infrared bands, and the areas with high anomalies were compared with the melting areas in the sequential years. According to results, a loss of 39% of glacier in the period of 28 years was determined. Furthermore, the relationship between GSTA and melting areas was exposed in both short- and long-term analysis. Hence, GSTA should be in consideration as a vital specification in the prediction of melting zones studies.