Mass balance of Greenland from combined GRACE and satellite altimetry inversion

Abstract:

With 12 years of GRACE satellite data now available, the ice mass loss trend of Greenland are clearly demonstrating ice mass loss in marginal zones of the ice sheets, and increasing mass loss trends in some regions such as the north west marginal zones. Although the GRACE release-5 products have provided a significant increase in resolution, the detailed space-based detection of where the ice sheet is loosing mass needs to come from other sources, notably satellite altimetry from EnviSat, IceSat and CryoSat, which point out the detailed location of areas of change, and – when combined with firn compaction and density models – also can be used to infer mass changes. In the paper we outline results of a novel direct inversion method, where all satellite data can be utilized in a general inverse estimation scheme, and the leakage from neighbouring ice caps minimized. We demonstrate overall mass change results from Greenland and Eastern Canadian Ice Caps 2003-14, highlighting the increasing melt in the marginal zones both in NW and NE Greenland. Most of the used data used are provided by the ESA Ice Sheets CCI project 2012-14, which makes available long term Essential Climate Variables such as Surface Elevation Changes, Ice Velocity and Calving Front Locations for the Greenland ice sheet. In the upcoming 2^nd phase of the CCI project, Gravimetric Mass Balance from GRACE will be included as a ECV time series, and a similar CCI project started for Antarctica.