Monitoring ice margin retreat and glacier area changes is crucial for assessing climate change impacts in mountainous regions. Google Earth™ offers a powerful toolset for analyzing these changes over several decades using its History, Polygon, and Path functions. For instance, glaciers in Iceland's Vatnajökull ice cap have experienced significant area loss, with two major glaciers shedding over 25 km² from 1985 to 2018 or 2020 and retreating at rates of 75-150 meters per year. In contrast, some glaciers terminating on land have lost less than 5 km² and exhibited fluctuations in the last two decades. In Canada, the Athabasca Glacier has decreased by 0.67 km² and retreated 0.48 km from 1985 to 2022, while the Columbia Glacier has lost 0.42 km² and retreated 0.62 km. In New Zealand, the Tasman Glacier shows a retreat rate exceeding 130 meters per year due to calving into Lake Tasman, whereas the Dall Glacier has retreated at approximately 80 meters per year. These observations highlight the diverse patterns of glacier change and demonstrate the utility of Google Earth™ in tracking glacier dynamics. The main limitations in this study are inconsistent georectification among different images, lower resolution of early images, and consistency in our measurements.
