Randolph Glacier Inventory (RGI 7.0) - Glacier Product

The Randolph Glacier Inventory (RGI) is a globally complete inventory of glacier outlines (excluding the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica). It is a subset of the database compiled by the Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) initiative. While GLIMS is a multi-temporal database with an extensive set of attributes, the RGI is intended to be a snapshot of the world’s glaciers at a specific target date, which in RGI 7.0 and all previous versions has been set as close as possible to the year 2000 (although in fact its range of dates can still be substantial in some regions). The RGI includes outlines of all glaciers larger than 0.01 km², which is the recommended minimum of the World Glacier Inventory.

The RGI was not designed for the measurement of glacier-by-glacier rates of area change, for which the greatest possible accuracy in dating, delineation and georeferencing is essential. While many RGI outlines meet these requirements, the primary focus of the RGI is on achieving global coverage, consistency, and proximity in a specific year. The strength of the RGI lies in its ability to handle large numbers of glaciers simultaneously. This allows, for example, for the estimation of glacier volumes and rates of elevation change at regional and global scales, as well as the simulation of cryospheric responses to climatic forcing.

Who develops and hosts the RGI? The RGI has been developed in an international community-driven effort of glaciologists starting in 2010. The inventory was named after “Randolph”, a town in New Hampshire, USA, where the team met for one of their meetings [Pfeffer et al., 2014]. In 2014 development of the RGI became the responsibility of the Working Group on the Randolph Glacier Inventory and Infrastructure for Glacier Monitoring, which operated under the International Association of Cryospheric Sciences (IACS). In 2019, a new Working Group was established to build upon the previous achievements and further expand its objectives: the IACS Working Group on the Randolph Glacier Inventory (RGI) and its role in future glacier monitoring and GLIMS.

The RGI datasets are listed on glims.org, and the RGI files can be downloaded through the data portal at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), which is the host for GLIMS.

Glacier product: includes outlines, attributes and auxiliary data for each individual glacier.

Data and Resources

  • SHP 01 Alaska - RGI2000 v7.0 G

    RGI glacier outlines as a shapefile (with accompanying .dbf, .prj, .cpg and .shx files). This product includes the glacier outlines as extracted from GLIMS together with additional data for each...

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  • SHP 02 Western Canada USA - RGI2000 v7.0 G

    RGI glacier outlines as a shapefile (with accompanying .dbf, .prj, .cpg and .shx files). This product includes the glacier outlines as extracted from GLIMS together with additional data for each...

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  • SHP 03 Arctic Canada North - RGI2000 v7.0 G

    RGI glacier outlines as a shapefile (with accompanying .dbf, .prj, .cpg and .shx files). This product includes the glacier outlines as extracted from GLIMS together with additional data for each...

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  • SHP 04 Arctic Canada South - RGI2000 v7.0 G

    RGI glacier outlines as a shapefile (with accompanying .dbf, .prj, .cpg and .shx files). This product includes the glacier outlines as extracted from GLIMS together with additional data for each...

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  • SHP 05 Greenland Periphery - RGI2000 v7.0 G

    RGI glacier outlines as a shapefile (with accompanying .dbf, .prj, .cpg and .shx files). This product includes the glacier outlines as extracted from GLIMS together with additional data for each...

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  • SHP 06 Iceland - RGI2000 v7.0 G

    RGI glacier outlines as a shapefile (with accompanying .dbf, .prj, .cpg and .shx files). This product includes the glacier outlines as extracted from GLIMS together with additional data for each...

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  • SHP 07 Svalbard Jan Mayen - RGI2000 v7.0 G

    RGI glacier outlines as a shapefile (with accompanying .dbf, .prj, .cpg and .shx files). This product includes the glacier outlines as extracted from GLIMS together with additional data for each...

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  • SHP 08 Scandinavia - RGI2000 v7.0 G

    RGI glacier outlines as a shapefile (with accompanying .dbf, .prj, .cpg and .shx files). This product includes the glacier outlines as extracted from GLIMS together with additional data for each...

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  • SHP 09 Russian Arctic - RGI2000 v7.0 G

    RGI glacier outlines as a shapefile (with accompanying .dbf, .prj, .cpg and .shx files). This product includes the glacier outlines as extracted from GLIMS together with additional data for each...

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  • SHP 10 North Asia - RGI2000 v7.0 G

    RGI glacier outlines as a shapefile (with accompanying .dbf, .prj, .cpg and .shx files). This product includes the glacier outlines as extracted from GLIMS together with additional data for each...

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  • SHP 11 Central Europe - RGI2000 v7.0 G

    RGI glacier outlines as a shapefile (with accompanying .dbf, .prj, .cpg and .shx files). This product includes the glacier outlines as extracted from GLIMS together with additional data for each...

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  • SHP 12 Caucasus Middle East - RGI2000 v7.0 G

    RGI glacier outlines as a shapefile (with accompanying .dbf, .prj, .cpg and .shx files). This product includes the glacier outlines as extracted from GLIMS together with additional data for each...

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  • SHP 13 Central Asia - RGI2000 v7.0 G

    RGI glacier outlines as a shapefile (with accompanying .dbf, .prj, .cpg and .shx files). This product includes the glacier outlines as extracted from GLIMS together with additional data for each...

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  • SHP 14 South Asia West - RGI2000 v7.0 G

    RGI glacier outlines as a shapefile (with accompanying .dbf, .prj, .cpg and .shx files). This product includes the glacier outlines as extracted from GLIMS together with additional data for each...

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  • SHP 15 South Asia East - RGI2000 v7.0 G

    RGI glacier outlines as a shapefile (with accompanying .dbf, .prj, .cpg and .shx files). This product includes the glacier outlines as extracted from GLIMS together with additional data for each...

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  • SHP 16 Low Latitudes - RGI2000 v7.0 G

    RGI glacier outlines as a shapefile (with accompanying .dbf, .prj, .cpg and .shx files). This product includes the glacier outlines as extracted from GLIMS together with additional data for each...

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  • SHP 17 Southern Andes - RGI2000 v7.0 G

    RGI glacier outlines as a shapefile (with accompanying .dbf, .prj, .cpg and .shx files). This product includes the glacier outlines as extracted from GLIMS together with additional data for each...

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  • SHP 18 New Zealand - RGI2000 v7.0 G

    RGI glacier outlines as a shapefile (with accompanying .dbf, .prj, .cpg and .shx files). This product includes the glacier outlines as extracted from GLIMS together with additional data for each...

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  • SHP 19 Subantarctic Antarctic Islands - RGI2000 v7.0 G

    RGI glacier outlines as a shapefile (with accompanying .dbf, .prj, .cpg and .shx files). This product includes the glacier outlines as extracted from GLIMS together with additional data for each...

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Cite this as

DOI:
10.5067/f6jmovy5navz
RGI 7.0 Consortium, 2023. Randolph Glacier Inventory - A Dataset of Global Glacier Outlines, Version 7.0. Boulder, Colorado USA. NSIDC: National Snow and Ice Data Center. doi:10.5067/f6jmovy5navz. Online access: https://doi.org/10.5067/f6jmovy5navz
Published: 2025-07-24 | Publisher: UNESCO

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Basic information
DOI https://doi.org/10.5067/f6jmovy5navz
Resource type Spatial data set
Date of creation 2025-07-22
Date of last revision 2025-07-24
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Metadata identifier Randolph-Glacier-Inventory-(RGI-7.0)---Glacier-Product
Metadata language English
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ISO 19115 topic category environment
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Version notes

Version 7.0, released in September 2023, comes with major outline quality improvements in nearly all RGI regions. In addition new products are available including, for example, outlines of glacier complexes and glacier centerlines. Furthermore, the RGI production has been entirely redesigned to use GLIMS as the sole source of data. The file generation process is now largely automated, extracting from GLIMS the outlines closest to the target date while also relying on expert judgment for the exact choice of available outlines. Open source scripts are used for all dataset creation steps. The file naming convention and attributes have changed substantially, requiring users of previous versions to adapt their data analysis workflow (see General revisions in RGI 7.0 for more details).
Version 7.0
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Name of the dataset creator (Legacy) IHP-WINS
Name of the dataset maintainer IHP-WINS
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Email of the dataset creator (Legacy) ihp-wins@unesco.org
Identifier of the dataset maintainer
Email of the dataset maintainer ihp-wins@unesco.org
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