Comparison of Greenland Ice Sheet topography measured by TOPSAR and airborne laser altimetry

1999 ◽  
Vol 37 (5) ◽  
pp. 2530-2535 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Bindschadler ◽  
M. Fahnestock ◽  
A. Sigmund
Author(s):  
C. J. van der Veen ◽  
Y. Ahn ◽  
B. M. Csatho ◽  
E. Mosley-Thompson ◽  
W. B. Krabill

1995 ◽  
Vol 16 (7) ◽  
pp. 1211-1222 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. B. Krabill ◽  
R. H. Thomas ◽  
C. F. Martin ◽  
R. N. Swift ◽  
E. B. Frederick

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inès Otosaka ◽  
Andrew Shepherd ◽  
Andreas Groh

<p>About a third of Greenland’s total ice losses come from the Northwest sector, a sector that includes a large number of marine-terminating outlet glaciers, which have all experienced widespread retreat triggered by ocean-induced melting. Here, we derive changes in surface elevation, volume and mass in the Northwest sector of the Greenland Ice Sheet using a decade of CryoSat-2 observations. We find an average elevation change rate of 18.7 ± 0.4 cm/yr, with rapid thinning at the ice sheet margins at a rate of 42.7 ± 0.9 cm/yr. We compare our CryoSat-2 rates of elevation change to airborne laser altimetry data from Operation IceBridge. Overall, there is a good agreement between the two datasets with a mean difference of 6.5 ± 0.5 cm/yr and standard deviation of 31.1 cm/yr. We further compute volume change, which we convert to mass change by testing three alternate density models and we find that the northwest sector has lost 386 ± 3.7 Gt of ice between July 2010 and July 2019. We compare our mass balance estimate to independent estimates from gravimetry and the mass budget method across different spatial scales. First, we compare the different estimates by splitting the sector into two and four regions. While our altimetry estimate is the least negative across all regions, the gravimetry and mass budget estimates alternate in recording the largest ice losses. We further compare mass changes derived from altimetry and the mass budget method in each of the 74 individual glacier basins of the Northwest sector. We find a high correlation of 0.81 between rates of mass change from altimetry and the mass budget method, with the highest differences recorded in Steenstrup-Dietrichson and Kjer Gletscher basins. Our comparisons show that the spatial pattern of the differences between mass balance estimates is complex, suggesting that discrepancies between techniques do not solely originate from one single region or technique. Finally, we explore several factors that could potentially bias our altimetry mass balance estimation, by investigating differences between satellite radar and airborne laser altimetry, the dependency on grid spatial resolution and the impact of using different density models.</p>


1998 ◽  
Vol 25 (20) ◽  
pp. 3887-3890 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. J. van der Veen ◽  
W. B. Krabill ◽  
B. M. Csatho ◽  
J. F. Bolzan

2002 ◽  
Vol 34 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 391-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
W Abdalati ◽  
W Krabill ◽  
E Frederick ◽  
S Manizade ◽  
C Martin ◽  
...  

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 1933-1948 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amaelle Landais ◽  
Valérie Masson-Delmotte ◽  
Emilie Capron ◽  
Petra M. Langebroek ◽  
Pepijn Bakker ◽  
...  

Abstract. The last interglacial period (LIG, ∼ 129–116 thousand years ago) provides the most recent case study of multimillennial polar warming above the preindustrial level and a response of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets to this warming, as well as a test bed for climate and ice sheet models. Past changes in Greenland ice sheet thickness and surface temperature during this period were recently derived from the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling (NEEM) ice core records, northwest Greenland. The NEEM paradox has emerged from an estimated large local warming above the preindustrial level (7.5 ± 1.8 °C at the deposition site 126 kyr ago without correction for any overall ice sheet altitude changes between the LIG and the preindustrial period) based on water isotopes, together with limited local ice thinning, suggesting more resilience of the real Greenland ice sheet than shown in some ice sheet models. Here, we provide an independent assessment of the average LIG Greenland surface warming using ice core air isotopic composition (δ15N) and relationships between accumulation rate and temperature. The LIG surface temperature at the upstream NEEM deposition site without ice sheet altitude correction is estimated to be warmer by +8.5 ± 2.5 °C compared to the preindustrial period. This temperature estimate is consistent with the 7.5 ± 1.8 °C warming initially determined from NEEM water isotopes but at the upper end of the preindustrial period to LIG temperature difference of +5.2 ± 2.3 °C obtained at the NGRIP (North Greenland Ice Core Project) site by the same method. Climate simulations performed with present-day ice sheet topography lead in general to a warming smaller than reconstructed, but sensitivity tests show that larger amplitudes (up to 5 °C) are produced in response to prescribed changes in sea ice extent and ice sheet topography.


2014 ◽  
Vol 60 (221) ◽  
pp. 489-499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Münchow ◽  
Laurie Padman ◽  
Helen A. Fricker

AbstractPetermann Gletscher, northwest Greenland, drains 4% of the Greenland ice sheet into Nares Strait. Its floating ice shelf retreated from 81 to 48 km in length during two large calving events in 2010 and 2012. We document changes in the three-dimensional ice-shelf structure from 2000 to 2012, using repeated tracks of airborne laser altimetry and ice radio-echo sounding, ICESat laser altimetry and MODIS visible imagery. The recent ice-shelf velocity, measured by tracking surface features between flights in 2010 and 2011, is ~1.25 km a−1, ~15–30% faster than estimates made before 2010. The steady- state along-flow ice divergence represents 6.3 Gta−1 mass loss through basal melting (~5Gta−1) and surface melting and sublimation (~1.0Gta−1). Airborne laser altimeter data reveal thinning, both along a thin central channel and on the thicker ambient ice shelf. From 2007 to 2010 the ice shelf thinned by ~5 m a−1, which represents a non-steady mass loss of ~4.1 Gta−1. We suggest that thinning in the basal channels structurally weakened the ice shelf and may have played a role in the recent calving events.


2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1057-1093
Author(s):  
R. T. W. L. Hurkmans ◽  
J. L. Bamber ◽  
C. H. Davis ◽  
I. R. Joughin ◽  
K. S. Khvorostovsky ◽  
...  

Abstract. Mass changes of the Greenland ice sheet may be estimated by the Input Output Method (IOM), satellite gravimetry, or via surface elevation change rates (dH / dt). Whereas the first two have been shown to agree well in reconstructing mass changes over the last decade, there are few decadal estimates from satellite altimetry and none that provide a time evolving trend that can be readily compared with the other methods. Here, we interpolate radar and laser altimetry data between 1995 and 2009 in both space and time to reconstruct the evolving volume changes. A firn densification model forced by the output of a regional climate model is used to convert volume to mass. We consider and investigate the potential sources of error in our reconstruction of mass trends, including geophysical biases in the altimetry, and the resulting mass change rates are compared to other published estimates. We find that mass changes are dominated by SMB until about 2001, when mass loss rapidly accelerates. The onset of this acceleration is somewhat later, and less gradual, compared to the IOM. Our time averaged mass changes agree well with recently published estimates based on gravimetry, IOM, laser altimetry, and with radar altimetry when merged with airborne data over outlet glaciers. We demonstrate, that with appropriate treatment, satellite radar altimetry can provide reliable estimates of mass trends for the Greenland ice sheet. With the inclusion of data from CryoSat II, this provides the possibility of producing a continuous time series of regional mass trends from 1992 onward.


2014 ◽  
Vol 111 (52) ◽  
pp. 18478-18483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beata M. Csatho ◽  
Anton F. Schenk ◽  
Cornelis J. van der Veen ◽  
Gregory Babonis ◽  
Kyle Duncan ◽  
...  

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