DebDaB: a database of supraglacial debris thickness and physical properties

Rocky debris covers around 7.3 % of the global glacier area, influencing ice melt rates and the surface mass balance of glaciers, making the dynamics and hydrology of debris-covered glaciers distinct from those of clean-ice glaciers. Accurate representation of debris in models is challenging, as measurements of the physical properties and thickness of the supraglacial debris layer are scarce. Here, we compile a database of measured and reported bulk physical properties and layer thicknesses of supraglacial debris that we call the supraglacial Debris Database (DebDaB) and that is open to community submissions. The majority of the database (90 %) is compiled from 172 sources in the literature, and the remaining 10 % was previously unpublished. DebDaB contains 8741 data entries for supraglacial debris layer thickness, of which 1770 entries also include sub-debris ablation rates, 179 thermal conductivity of debris, 160 aerodynamic surface roughness length, 79 debris albedo, 59 debris emissivity, and 37 debris porosity. The data are distributed over 84 glaciers in 13 regions in the Global Terrestrial Network for Glaciers. We show regional differences in the distribution of debris thickness measurements in DebDaB and fit simplified Østrem curves to 19 glaciers with sufficient debris thickness and ablation data. The data in DebDaB can be used for energy balance, melt, and surface mass balance studies by incorporating site-specific debris properties or for evaluation of remote sensing estimates of debris thickness and surface roughness. They can also help future field campaigns on debris-covered glaciers by identifying observation gaps. DebDaB’s uneven spatial coverage points to sampling biases in community efforts to observe debris-covered glaciers, with some regions (e.g. central Europe and South Asia) well-sampled but others having gaps with prevalent debris (e.g. the Andes and Alaska). Debris thickness measurements are mostly concentrated at lower elevations, leaving higher-elevation debris-covered areas undersampled and suggesting that our knowledge of debris properties might not be representative of all elevations. The aims of DebDaB, as an openly available dataset, are to evolve over time, to be updated, and to add to community submissions as new data on supraglacial properties become available. The data described in this paper can be accessed from Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14224835 (Groeneveld et al., 2025).