C12A-08
Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG): Early Results from NASA’s Latest Airborne Mission

Monday, 14 December 2015: 12:05
3007 (Moscone West)
Josh K Willis1, Eric J Rignot2, Ian G Fenty1, Michael Schodlok3, Ichiro Fukumori1, Ala Khazendar1, Delwyn Moller4, Andrew F Thompson5, David Holland6, James Morison7, Kirsty J Tinto8, Rene Forsberg9, Martin Jakobsson10, Steven J Dinardo1 and OMG Science Team, (1)NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (2)University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States, (3)Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (4)Remote Sensing Solutions, Inc., Sierra Madre, CA, United States, (5)California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United States, (6)New York University, New York, NY, United States, (7)Polar Science Center, Seattle, WA, United States, (8)Columbia University, Palisades, NY, United States, (9)Technical University of Denmark - Space, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark, (10)Stockholm University, Department of Geological Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden
Abstract:
Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) is a newly launched Earth Ventures Suborbital Mission to investigate the role of the oceans in ice loss around the margins of the Greenland Ice Sheet. A five-year airborne campaign, OMG will directly measure ocean warming and glacier retreat around all of Greenland. By relating these two, we will explore one of the most pressing open questions about how climate change drives sea level rise: How quickly are the warming oceans melting the Greenland Ice Sheet from the edges? The airborne campaigns will consist of once-per-year surveys of ocean conditions by deploying up to 250 expendable temperature and salinity probes, covering most of Greenland’s continental shelf. In addition, a once-per-year survey of glacier surface elevations for nearly all marine terminating glaciers will be conducted. Because the shape and depth of the sea floor help control whether warm water can reach a particular glacier, an airborne gravity campaign will also provide bathymetry information in poorly measured areas of the shelf. All of these campaigns will begin in 2016. However, this summer a ship-based survey of sea floor bathymetry is being conducted along the West Coast of Greenland. An overview of the survey strategy as well as preliminary results from the ship survey, including bathymetry as well as ocean temperature and salinity profiles, will be presented.
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