Evaluation of Surface Melt on the Greenland Ice Sheet using SMAP L-Band Microwave Radiometry ...

• Main Author: Mousavi, Mohammad
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: Root 2023
• Subjects: Arctic; Greenland; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48577/jpl.izavqg; https://dataverse.jpl.nasa.gov/citation?persistentId=doi:10.48577/jpl.IZAVQG

Monitoring melt extent and timing on the Greenland ice sheet is important for tracking the ice sheet’s mass and energy balance as well as the global and Arctic climate variability and change. In this study, we use L-band (1.4 GHz) brightness temperature observations collected by NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission to investigate the extent, duration and intensity of melt events on the Greenland Ice Sheet from 2015 to 2020. SMAP provides nearly all-weather surface monitoring over all of Greenland twice daily with morning and evening overpasses at approximately 40 km spatial resolution. We applied empirical threshold and geophysical model-based algorithms using horizontally and vertically polarized microwave brightness temperature differences to quantify both the intensity and extent of surface melting. Analysis of the melt seasons shows that Greenland experienced an unusually strong melt event at the end of July 2019, which extended the melt area across much of the dry snow zone over a period ...