The ESA Glaciers Climate Change Initiative (CCI) dataset consists of data produced by the ESA CCI Glaciers Project. The main objective of the Glaciers_cci project is to contribute to the efforts of creating a globally complete and detailed glacier inventory as requested in action T2.1 by GCOS (2006). This activity has two major parts: One is data creation (glacier outlines) in selected and currently still missing key regions, and the other one is in establishing a more consistent framework for glacier entity identification to enhance the integrity and error characterization of the available data sets. As meltwater from glaciers and ice caps provide a substantial contribution to global sea-level rise, the project will also create two additional products in selected key regions, elevation changes and velocity fields

The Randolph Glacier Inventory (RGI 5.0) is a global inventory of glacier outlines. It is supplemental to the Global Land Ice Measurements from Space initiative (GLIMS). Production of the RGI was motivated by the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR5). Future updates will be made to the RGI and the GLIMS Glacier Database in parallel during a transition period. As all these data are incorporated into the GLIMS Glacier Database and as download tools are developed to obtain GLIMS data in the RGI data format, the RGI will evolve into a downloadable subset of GLIMS, offering complete one-time coverage, version control, and a standard set of attributes. The product provided here is a converted raster version of the Randolph Glacier Inventory (RGI 5.0) data, provided by the ESA Climate Change Initiative (CCI) Glaciers project. The CCI Glaciers project is one of a number of contributors to the RGI 5.0 dataset. For more details, and for a complete list of contributors, please see the RGI 5.0 Technical Report in the Documentation section below. The following reference is recommended when citing RGI version 5.0: Arendt, A., A. Bliss, T. Bolch, J.G. Cogley, A.S. Gardner, J.-O. Hagen, R. Hock, M. Huss, G. Kaser, C. Kienholz, W.T. Pfeffer, G. Moholdt, F. Paul, V. Radić, L. Andreassen, S. Bajracharya, N.E. Barrand, M. Beedle, E. Berthier, R. Bhambri, I. Brown, E. Burgess, D. Burgess, F. Cawkwell, T. Chinn, L. Copland, B. Davies, H. De Angelis, E. Dolgova, L. Earl, K. Filbert, R. Forester, A.G. Fountain, H. Frey, B. Giffen, N. Glasser, W.Q. Guo, S. Gurney, W. Hagg, D. Hall, U.K. Haritashya, G. Hartmann, C. Helm, S. Herreid, I. Howat, G. Kapustin, T. Khromova, M. König, J. Kohler, D. Kriegel, S. Kutuzov, I. Lavrentiev, R. LeBris, S.Y. Liu, J. Lund, W. Manley, R. Marti, C. Mayer, E.S. Miles, X. Li, B. Menounos, A. Mercer, N. Mölg, P. Mool, G. Nosenko, A. Negrete, T. Nuimura, C. Nuth, R. Pettersson, A. Racoviteanu, R. Ranzi, P. Rastner, F. Rau, B. Raup, J. Rich, H. Rott, A. Sakai, C. Schneider, Y. Seliverstov, M. Sharp, O. Sigurðsson, C. Stokes, R.G. Way, R. Wheate, S. Winsvold, G. Wolken, F. Wyatt, N. Zheltyhina, 2015, Randolph Glacier Inventory – A Dataset of Global Glacier Outlines: Version 5.0. Global Land Ice Measurements from Space, Boulder Colorado, USA. Digital Media.