The past 7 years have been the warmest consecutive period on record by a clear margin, according to the Copernicus climate data archive. Glaciers and icecaps react with accelerated adaptation to those drastically changing environmental conditions. Profound knowledge about their status and ongoing changes in terms of quantifiable ice loss is crucial to predict the future of those vital sources of ecosystems and populations. The contribution of remote sensing techniques has become indispensable to complement in situ observations and thus letting modelled predictions emerge.Over the past decade the satellite mission of TanDEM-X has accomplished the goal of covering the terrestrial surface with high resolution SAR imaging at least twice. We selected suitable datasets from that mission archive to calculate Digital Elevation Models (DEMs). Comparing the elevation datasets on Glaciers and Icecaps with the temporal baseline of the two global acquisition periods (2012-2018) allows for the calculation of elevation and volume change.Over the last year we calculated annual elevation change rates in over 30 000 satellite image scenes to present a global picture of Glacier change that corresponds to the TanDEM-X mission time. We compare these to previous changes which we calculated in respect to SRTM elevation (2000-2012) where possible and/or existing studies. The first results for Arctic Russia and Patagonia show increased rates of volume loss from 70 to exceeding 100 percent, compared to results from the earlier decade. Whereas for the regions of High Mountain Asia we find more moderate acceleration. The presentation aims at providing a comprehensive overview of surface elevation and volume changes for most Randolph Glacier Inventory regions.
