Balance Velocities for the Greenland Ice Sheet

• Main Authors: Ian Joughin Jet, Ian Joughin, Mark Fahnestock, Simon Ekholm, Ron Kwok
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Greenland; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.32.3380; http://techreports.jpl.nasa.gov/1997/97-0542.pdf

. We present amap of balance Theresolution of the DEM, which was derived 2 velocities for the Greenland ice sheet. from the radar altimeter data, yields fargreater detail than inearlier balance velocity estimates for Greenland. The velocity contours reveal in striking detail the location of an ice stream in North Eastern Greenland, which was only recently discovered using satellite imagery. Enhanced flow associated with all of the major outlets is clearly visible. While errors in the source data yield errors in the absolute flow speeds, the balance velocity map appears to accurately locate areas of enhanced flow. Such data are extremely useful for modeling, mass balance studies, and field planning. 3 1. Introduction The coverage over the Greenland Ice Sheet by the satellite-borne radar altimeter has dramatically improved our knowledge of the shape of the ice sheet surface. In this paper we show that this knowledge, when combined with estimates of ice thickness and accumulation, yie.