Partitioning Recent Greenland Mass Loss

By M. R. van den Broeke, Jonathan L. Bamber, J. Ettema, Eric J. M. Rignot, Ernst J. O. Schrama, W. J. van de Berg, E. van Meijgaard, Isabella Velicogna, Bert Wouters. Science, 2009

819 citations recorded by the source corpus.

GRACE and Movement Together Recent measurements of the rate of mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet vary approximately by a factor of three. Resolving these discrepancies is essential for determining the current mass balance of the ice sheet and to project sea level rise in the future. Van den Broeke et al. (p. 984) obtained consistent estimates from two independent methods, one based on observations of ice movement combined with model calculations and the other on remote gravity measurements made by the GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellites. The combination of these approaches also resolves the separate contributions of surface processes and of ice dynamics, the two major routes of ice mass loss. The major components of decay contributing to mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet can be quantified. Mass budget calculations, validated with satellite gravity observations [from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites], enable us to quantify the individual components of recent Greenland mass loss. The total 2000–2008 mass loss of ~1500 gigatons, equivalent to 0.46 millimeters per year of global sea level rise, is equally split between surface processes (runoff and precipitation) and ice dynamics. Without the moderating effects of increased snowfall and refreezing, post-1996 Greenland ice sheet mass losses would have been 100% higher. Since 2006, high summer melt rates have increased Greenland ice sheet mass loss to 273 gigatons per year (0.75 millimeters per year of equivalent sea level rise). The seasonal cycle in surface mass balance fully accounts for detrended GRACE mass variations, confirming insignificant subannual variation in ice sheet discharge.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4dabb595b274f1da21c73d2c1710ad2cc179885d

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Citations in the corpus

A Reconciled Estimate of Ice-Sheet Mass Balance (2012, methodology): “(5), by varying the baseline period used to compute the anomalies.”
Intersatellite laser ranging instrument for the GRACE follow-on mission (2012, background): “Temporal variations associated with mass transport within the hydrosphere have been identified, see for e.g. Tapley et al. (2004a), Schmidt et al. (2008), Wouters et al. (2008), van den Broeke et al. (2009) and Tiwari et al. (2009).”
Subaqueous melting of Store Glacier, west Greenland from three‐dimensional, high‐resolution numerical modeling and ocean observations (2013, background): “[2] Mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet has increased rapidly in the past decades [Velicogna, 2009] due to a combination of enhanced surface melting and accelerated ice discharge into the ocean [Rignot and Kanagaratnam, 2006; van den Broeke et al., 2009].”
The land ice contribution to sea level during the satellite era (2017, methodology): “For Greenland, about 60% of the present-day mass removal is from ice discharge, and 40% from surface ablation but their influence on recent imbalance is the other way around (van den Broeke et al 2009, van den Broeke et al 2016).”
Response of the Atlantic Ocean circulation to Greenland Ice Sheet melting in a strongly‐eddying ocean model (2012, background): “Enhanced run-off and iceberg discharge are estimated to contribute in equal parts to this deficit [van den Broeke et al., 2009], while increases in precipitation have partially offset these mass losses.”
Regional acceleration in ice mass loss from Greenland and Antarctica using GRACE time‐variable gravity data (2014, methodology): “For Greenland, we use the period 1961–1990 when the ice sheet was close to balance [van den Broeke et al., 2009].”