Recent research shows increasing decadal ice mass losses from the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets and more generally from glaciers worldwide in the light of continued global warming. Here, in an update of our previous ISMASS paper (Hanna et al., 2013), we review recent observational estimates of ice sheet and glacier mass balance, and their related uncertainties, first briefly considering relevant monitoring methods. Focusing on the response to climate change during 1992–2018, and especially the post-IPCC AR5 period, we discuss recent changes in the relative contributions of ice sheets and glaciers to sea-level change. We assess recent advances in understanding of the relative importance of surface mass balance and ice dynamics in overall ice-sheet mass change. We also consider recent improvements in ice-sheet modelling, highlighting data-model linkages and the use of updated observational datasets in ice-sheet models. Finally, by identifying key deficiencies in the observations and models that hamper current understanding and limit reliability of future ice-sheet projections, we make recommendations to the research community for reducing these knowledge gaps. Our synthesis aims to provide a critical and timely review of the current state of the science in advance of the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report that is due in 2021.

The current state of technology permits very accurate 3D reconstructions of real scenes acquiring information through quite different sensors altogether. A high precision modelling that allows simulating any element of the environment on virtual interfaces has also been achieved. This paper illustrates a methodology to correctly model a 3D reconstructed scene, with either a camera RGB-D or a laser, and how to integrate and display it in virtual reality environments based on Unity, as well as a comparison between both results. The main interest regarding this line of research consists in the automation of all the process from the map generation to its visualisation with the VR glasses, although this first approach only managed to get results using several programs manually. The long-term objective would be indeed a real-time immersion in Unity interacting with the scene seen by the camera.