Recent North Greenland temperature warming and accumulation
In a warming climate concise knowledge of the mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet is of utter importance. Speculations that current warming will increase the snow accumulation and mitigate mass balance losses are unconstrained as accumulation data across large regions of the northern ice sheet a...
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ftcopernicus:oai:publications.copernicus.org:tcd91068 2023-05-15T15:10:24+02:00 Recent North Greenland temperature warming and accumulation Kjær, Helle Astrid Zens, Patrick Edwards, Ross Olesen, Martin Mottram, Ruth Lewis, Gabriel Terkelsen Holme, Christian Black, Samuel Holst Lund, Kasper Schmidt, Mikkel Dahl-Jensen, Dorthe Vinther, Bo Svensson, Anders Karlsson, Nanna Box, Jason E. Kipfstuhl, Sepp Vallelonga, Paul 2021-01-11 application/pdf https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2020-337 https://tc.copernicus.org/preprints/tc-2020-337/ eng eng doi:10.5194/tc-2020-337 https://tc.copernicus.org/preprints/tc-2020-337/ eISSN: 1994-0424 Text 2021 ftcopernicus https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2020-337 2021-01-18T17:22:15Z In a warming climate concise knowledge of the mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet is of utter importance. Speculations that current warming will increase the snow accumulation and mitigate mass balance losses are unconstrained as accumulation data across large regions of the northern ice sheet are scarce. We reconstructed the accumulation from six north Greenland shallow firn cores (~10 m) and eight snow cores (~2 m) to constrain recent accumulation patterns in northern Greenland and calculated recent warming in the same area using borehole temperature measurements. We find an increase in temperatures in the north Greenland interior of 0.9 to 2.5 °C (method and site dependent) per decade over the past two decades in line with an Arctic amplified anthropogenic warming. We compare annual reconstructed accumulation from the firn cores (1966–2015) to radar estimates and to annual re-analysis data (1980–2016) of precipitation subtracted evaporation from the regional climate model HIRHAM5, operated by the Danish Meteorological Institute. The spatial variability resembles that observed in earlier estimates with a clear increase west of the topographic divide and a low accumulation area across the north-eastern ice sheet. Our accumulation results are comparable to earlier firn core estimates, despite being larger in the east. We only find a positive significant trend in the accumulation for the period 2000–2010 to the northwest. In the vicinity of the EGRIP deep ice core drilling site, we find variable accumulation patterns for two 15 km apart firn cores likely owing to local topographic effects as a result of the North East Greenland Ice Stream dynamics. Text Arctic East Greenland Greenland ice core Ice Sheet North Greenland Copernicus Publications: E-Journals Arctic Greenland |
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Open Polar |
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Copernicus Publications: E-Journals |
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ftcopernicus |
language |
English |
description |
In a warming climate concise knowledge of the mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet is of utter importance. Speculations that current warming will increase the snow accumulation and mitigate mass balance losses are unconstrained as accumulation data across large regions of the northern ice sheet are scarce. We reconstructed the accumulation from six north Greenland shallow firn cores (~10 m) and eight snow cores (~2 m) to constrain recent accumulation patterns in northern Greenland and calculated recent warming in the same area using borehole temperature measurements. We find an increase in temperatures in the north Greenland interior of 0.9 to 2.5 °C (method and site dependent) per decade over the past two decades in line with an Arctic amplified anthropogenic warming. We compare annual reconstructed accumulation from the firn cores (1966–2015) to radar estimates and to annual re-analysis data (1980–2016) of precipitation subtracted evaporation from the regional climate model HIRHAM5, operated by the Danish Meteorological Institute. The spatial variability resembles that observed in earlier estimates with a clear increase west of the topographic divide and a low accumulation area across the north-eastern ice sheet. Our accumulation results are comparable to earlier firn core estimates, despite being larger in the east. We only find a positive significant trend in the accumulation for the period 2000–2010 to the northwest. In the vicinity of the EGRIP deep ice core drilling site, we find variable accumulation patterns for two 15 km apart firn cores likely owing to local topographic effects as a result of the North East Greenland Ice Stream dynamics. |
format |
Text |
author |
Kjær, Helle Astrid Zens, Patrick Edwards, Ross Olesen, Martin Mottram, Ruth Lewis, Gabriel Terkelsen Holme, Christian Black, Samuel Holst Lund, Kasper Schmidt, Mikkel Dahl-Jensen, Dorthe Vinther, Bo Svensson, Anders Karlsson, Nanna Box, Jason E. Kipfstuhl, Sepp Vallelonga, Paul |
spellingShingle |
Kjær, Helle Astrid Zens, Patrick Edwards, Ross Olesen, Martin Mottram, Ruth Lewis, Gabriel Terkelsen Holme, Christian Black, Samuel Holst Lund, Kasper Schmidt, Mikkel Dahl-Jensen, Dorthe Vinther, Bo Svensson, Anders Karlsson, Nanna Box, Jason E. Kipfstuhl, Sepp Vallelonga, Paul Recent North Greenland temperature warming and accumulation |
author_facet |
Kjær, Helle Astrid Zens, Patrick Edwards, Ross Olesen, Martin Mottram, Ruth Lewis, Gabriel Terkelsen Holme, Christian Black, Samuel Holst Lund, Kasper Schmidt, Mikkel Dahl-Jensen, Dorthe Vinther, Bo Svensson, Anders Karlsson, Nanna Box, Jason E. Kipfstuhl, Sepp Vallelonga, Paul |
author_sort |
Kjær, Helle Astrid |
title |
Recent North Greenland temperature warming and accumulation |
title_short |
Recent North Greenland temperature warming and accumulation |
title_full |
Recent North Greenland temperature warming and accumulation |
title_fullStr |
Recent North Greenland temperature warming and accumulation |
title_full_unstemmed |
Recent North Greenland temperature warming and accumulation |
title_sort |
recent north greenland temperature warming and accumulation |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2020-337 https://tc.copernicus.org/preprints/tc-2020-337/ |
geographic |
Arctic Greenland |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Greenland |
genre |
Arctic East Greenland Greenland ice core Ice Sheet North Greenland |
genre_facet |
Arctic East Greenland Greenland ice core Ice Sheet North Greenland |
op_source |
eISSN: 1994-0424 |
op_relation |
doi:10.5194/tc-2020-337 https://tc.copernicus.org/preprints/tc-2020-337/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2020-337 |
_version_ |
1766341440390037504 |