Greenland Ice Sheet; ice dynamics; mass loss; satellite altimetry; surface mass balance; vertical land motion; Earth-Surface Processes; Geophysics
Abstract :
[en] We use satellite and airborne altimetry to estimate annual mass changes of the Greenland Ice Sheet. We estimate ice loss corresponding to a sea-level rise of 6.9 ± 0.4 mm from April 2011 to April 2020, with a highest annual ice loss rate of 1.4 mm/yr sea-level equivalent from April 2019 to April 2020. On a regional scale, our annual mass loss timeseries reveals 10-15 m/yr dynamic thickening at the terminus of Jakobshavn Isbræ from April 2016 to April 2018, followed by a return to dynamic thinning. We observe contrasting patterns of mass loss acceleration in different basins across the ice sheet and suggest that these spatiotemporal trends could be useful for calibrating and validating prognostic ice sheet models. In addition to resolving the spatial and temporal fingerprint of Greenland's recent ice loss, these mass loss grids are key for partitioning contemporary elastic vertical land motion from longer-term glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) trends at GPS stations around the ice sheet. Our ice-loss product results in a significantly different GIA interpretation from a previous ice-loss product.
Disciplines :
Earth sciences & physical geography
Author, co-author :
Khan, Shfaqat A ; DTU Space Technical University of Denmark Kongens Lyngby Denmark
Bamber, Jonathan L ; Bristol Glaciology Centre University of Bristol Bristol UK ; Department of Aerospace and Geodesy Technical University Munich Munich Germany
Rignot, Eric ; Department of Earth System Science University of California Irvine Irvine CA USA
Helm, Veit ; Glaciology Section Alfred Wegener Institute Bremerhaven Germany
Aschwanden, Andy ; University of Alaska Fairbanks Fairbanks AK USA
Holland, David M ; New York University New York NY USA ; Center for Global Sea Level Change New York University Abu Dhabi UAE
van den Broeke, Michiel ; Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht Utrecht University Utrecht The Netherlands
King, Michalea ; Applied Physics Laboratory University of Washington Seattle WA USA
Noël, Brice ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de géographie > Climatologie et Topoclimatologie ; Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht Utrecht University Utrecht The Netherlands
Truffer, Martin ; University of Alaska Fairbanks Fairbanks AK USA
Humbert, Angelika ; Glaciology Section Alfred Wegener Institute Bremerhaven Germany
Colgan, William ; Department of Glaciology and Climate Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland Copenhagen Denmark
Vijay, Saurabh ; Department of Civil Engineering Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee Roorkee India
Kuipers Munneke, Peter ; Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht Utrecht University Utrecht The Netherlands
S A Khan acknowledges support from the Independent Research Fund Denmark- Natural Sciences Grant No. 1026-00085B and Villum Fonden (Villum Experiment Programme) Project No. 40718. J L Bamber acknowledges support from European Research Council Grant No. 694188 (GlobalMass) and German Federal Ministry of Education and Research in the framework of the international future AI lab (Grant number: 01DD20001). D M Holland is grateful for support from NYU Abu Dhabi grant G1204 and NASA's Ocean Melting Greenland project. B. No?l was funded by the NWO VENI grant VI. Veni.192.019. W. Colgan acknowledges support from the Independent Research Fund Denmark (8049-00003B) and the Programme for Monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Finally, we thank the editor (Olga Sergienko), anonymous associate editor and two anonymous reviewers for insightful and constructive comments to earlier drafts of this manuscript.S A Khan acknowledges support from the Independent Research Fund Denmark‐ Natural Sciences Grant No. 1026‐00085B and Villum Fonden (Villum Experiment Programme) Project No. 40718. J L Bamber acknowledges support from European Research Council Grant No. 694188 (GlobalMass) and German Federal Ministry of Education and Research in the framework of the international future AI lab (Grant number: 01DD20001). D M Holland is grateful for support from NYU Abu Dhabi grant G1204 and NASA's Ocean Melting Greenland project. B. Noël was funded by the NWO VENI grant VI. Veni.192.019. W. Colgan acknowledges support from the Independent Research Fund Denmark (8049‐00003B) and the Programme for Monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Finally, we thank the editor (Olga Sergienko), anonymous associate editor and two anonymous reviewers for insightful and constructive comments to earlier drafts of this manuscript.
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