C23C-0797
A downscaled 1 km dataset of daily Greenland ice sheet surface mass balance components (1958-2014)

Tuesday, 15 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Brice Noel1, Willem Jan Van De Berg1, Xavier Fettweis2, Horst Machguth3, Ian M Howat4 and Michiel R van den Broeke5, (1)Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht, Utrecht, Netherlands, (2)University of Liège, Geography, Liège, Belgium, (3)Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, Copenhagen, Denmark, (4)Byrd Polar Research Center, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, United States, (5)Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands
Abstract:
The current spatial resolution in regional climate models (RCMs), typically around 5 to 20 km, remains too coarse to accurately reproduce the spatial variability in surface mass balance (SMB) components over the narrow ablation zones, marginal outlet glaciers and neighbouring ice caps of the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS). In these topographically rough terrains, the SMB components are highly dependent on local variations in topography. However, the relatively low-resolution elevation and ice mask prescribed in RCMs contribute to significantly underestimate melt and runoff in these regions due to unresolved valley glaciers and fjords. Therefore, near-km resolution topography is essential to better capture SMB variability in these spatially restricted regions.

We present a 1 km resolution dataset of daily GrIS SMB covering the period 1958-2014, which is statistically downscaled from data of the polar regional climate model RACMO2.3 at 11 km, using an elevation dependence. The dataset includes all individual SMB components projected on the elevation and ice mask from the GIMP DEM, down-sampled to 1 km. Daily runoff and sublimation are interpolated to the 1 km topography using a local regression to elevation valid for each day specifically; daily precipitation is bi-linearly downscaled without elevation corrections. The daily SMB dataset is then reconstructed by summing downscaled precipitation, sublimation and runoff.

High-resolution elevation and ice mask allow for properly resolving the narrow ablation zones and valley glaciers at the GrIS margins, leading to significant increase in runoff estimate. In these regions, and especially over narrow glaciers tongues, the downscaled products improve on the original RACMO2.3 outputs by better representing local SMB patterns through a gradual ablation increase towards the GrIS margins. We discuss the impact of downscaling on the SMB components in a case study for a spatially restricted region, where large elevation discrepancies are observed between both resolutions. Owing to generally enhanced runoff in the GrIS ablation zone, the evaluation of daily downscaled SMB against ablation measurements, collected at in-situ measuring sites derived from a newly compiled ablation dataset, shows a better agreement with observations relative to native RACMO2.3 SMB at 11 km.

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