• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: L19501; doi; 10.1029/2006GL027511; Antarctic; Greenland; Antarc*; Antarctica; glacier
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.516.1103; http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/matnat/geofag/GEO4420/h07/papers/kaser_GRL2006.pdf

[1] Working with comprehensive collections of directly-measured data on the annual mass balance of glaciers other than the two ice sheets, we combine independent analyses to show that there is broad agreement on the evolution of global mass balance since 1960. Mass balance was slightly below zero around 1970 and has been growing more negative since then. Excluding peripheral ice bodies in Greenland and Antarctica, global average specific balance for 1961–1990 was 219 ± 112 kg m2 a1, representing 0.33 ± 0.17 mm SLE (sea-level equivalent) a1. For 2001–2004, the figures are 510 ± 101 kg m2 a1 and 0.77±0.15 mm SLE a1. Including the smaller Greenland and Antarctic glaciers, global total balance becomes 0.38 ± 0.19 mm SLE a1 for 1961–1990 and 0.98 ± 0.19 mm SLE a1 for 2001– 2004. For 1991–2004 the glacier contribution, 0.77 ± 0.26 mm SLE a1, is 20–30 % of a recent estimate of 3.2 ± 0.4 mm a1 of total sea-level rise for 1993–2005. While our error estimates are not rigorous, we believe them to be liberal as far as they go, but we also discuss several unquantified biases of which any may prove to be significant.