Ice mass variation in Greenland and Antarctica from GRACE

The GRACE satellite mission, launched in March of 2002, provides monthly measurementsof time variable gravity at scales of a few hundred kilometers and larger. Thesedata can be used to estimate temporal variations in the distribution of surface mass.Weexamine here the 22 monthly GRACE gravity field...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Velicogna, I., Wahr, J., Hanna, E., Huybrechts, Philippe
Format: Conference Object
Language:unknown
Published: 2005
Subjects:
Antarctic
Greenland
Antarc*
Antarctica
Online Access:https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/12249/
https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.22683
Description
Summary:The GRACE satellite mission, launched in March of 2002, provides monthly measurementsof time variable gravity at scales of a few hundred kilometers and larger. Thesedata can be used to estimate temporal variations in the distribution of surface mass.Weexamine here the 22 monthly GRACE gravity field solutions that are currently availablefor analyses. We find that these fields can be used to recover mass imbalance andnet snow accumulation for the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. GRACE estimatesof Greenland mass change agree with ice mass imbalance estimates from altimeterheights within measurement errors. We also estimate net snow accumulation from thenonsecular component of the GRACE signal.We compared nonsecular variation fromGRACE with ERA40-derived estimates and we interpreted the differences.

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