Observing and Modeling Ice Sheet Surface Mass Balance

Surface mass-balance changes of the Greenland ice sheet

Mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet over the past decade has caused the impression that the ice sheet has been behaving anomalously to the warming of the 1990s. We have reconstructed the recent (1866–2005) surface mass-balance (SMB) history of the Greenland ice sheet on a 5 5 km grid using a runoff-retention model based on the positive degree-day method. The model is forced with new datasets...

Mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet.

The Antarctic contribution to sea-level rise has long been uncertain. While regional variability in ice dynamics has been revealed, a picture of mass changes throughout the continental ice sheet is lacking. Here, we use satellite radar altimetry to measure the elevation change of 72% of the grounded ice sheet during the period 1992-2003. Depending on the density of the snow giving rise to the o...

Ice Sheet Modeling: Mass Balance Relationships for Map-plane Ice Sheet Reconstruction: Application to Tharsis Montes Glaciation

Introduction: Deposits on the flanks of the large Tharsis Montes volcanoes (Arsia, Pavonis, and Ascraeus Mons) have been recognized to be of glacial origin [1,2]. These Amazonian-aged deposits display three distinct facies, ridged, knobby, and smooth [3], each of which can be associated with different glacial processes [1]. The outermost ridged facies is thought to be the imprint of ice-margin ...

Estimation of the Greenland ice sheet surface mass balance during 20th and 21st centuries

A reconciled estimate of ice-sheet mass balance.

We combined an ensemble of satellite altimetry, interferometry, and gravimetry data sets using common geographical regions, time intervals, and models of surface mass balance and glacial isostatic adjustment to estimate the mass balance of Earth's polar ice sheets. We find that there is good agreement between different satellite methods--especially in Greenland and West Antarctica--and that com...