Feasibility of improving a priori regional climate model estimates of Greenland ice sheet surface mass loss through assimilation of measured ice surface temperatures ...

• Main Authors: Navari, M., Margulis, S. A., Bateni, S. M., Tedesco, Marco, Alexander, P., Fettweis, X.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Columbia University 2016
• Subjects: Cryosphere; Climatology; Ice sheets; Ice sheets > Remote sensing; Greenland; Rae; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.7916/d8h71t9f; https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8H71T9F

The Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) has been the focus of climate studies due to its considerable impact on sea level rise. Accurate estimates of surface mass fluxes would contribute to understanding the cause of its recent changes and would help to better estimate the past, current and future contribution of the GrIS to sea level rise. Though the estimates of the GrIS surface mass fluxes have improved significantly over the last decade, there is still considerable disparity between the results from different methodologies (e.g., Rae et al., 2012; Vernon et al., 2013). The data assimilation approach can merge information from different methodologies in a consistent way to improve the GrIS surface mass fluxes. In this study, an ensemble batch smoother data assimilation approach was developed to assess the feasibility of generating a reanalysis estimate of the GrIS surface mass fluxes via integrating remotely sensed ice surface temperature measurements with a regional climate model (a priori) estimate. The ...