Forty-six years of Greenland Ice Sheet mass balance from 1972 to 2018

We reconstruct the mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet using a comprehensive survey of thickness, surface elevation, velocity, and surface mass balance (SMB) of 260 glaciers from 1972 to 2018. We calculate mass discharge, D, into the ocean directly for 107 glaciers (85% of D) and indirectly for...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Main Authors: Mouginot, Jérémie, Rignot, Eric, Bjørk, Anders A., van den Broeke, Michiel, Millan, Romain, Morlighem, Mathieu, Noël, Brice, Scheuchl, Bernd, Wood, Michael
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: National Academy of Sciences 2019
Subjects:
Physical Sciences
Greenland
glacier
Ice Sheet
Online Access:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6511040/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31010924
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1904242116
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Summary:We reconstruct the mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet using a comprehensive survey of thickness, surface elevation, velocity, and surface mass balance (SMB) of 260 glaciers from 1972 to 2018. We calculate mass discharge, D, into the ocean directly for 107 glaciers (85% of D) and indirectly for 110 glaciers (15%) using velocity-scaled reference fluxes. The decadal mass balance switched from a mass gain of +47 [Formula: see text] 21 Gt/y in 1972–1980 to a loss of 51 [Formula: see text] 17 Gt/y in 1980–1990. The mass loss increased from 41 [Formula: see text] 17 Gt/y in 1990–2000, to 187 [Formula: see text] 17 Gt/y in 2000–2010, to 286 [Formula: see text] 20 Gt/y in 2010–2018, or sixfold since the 1980s, or 80 [Formula: see text] 6 Gt/y per decade, on average. The acceleration in mass loss switched from positive in 2000–2010 to negative in 2010–2018 due to a series of cold summers, which illustrates the difficulty of extrapolating short records into longer-term trends. Cumulated since 1972, the largest contributions to global sea level rise are from northwest (4.4 [Formula: see text] 0.2 mm), southeast (3.0 [Formula: see text] 0.3 mm), and central west (2.0 [Formula: see text] 0.2 mm) Greenland, with a total 13.7 [Formula: see text] 1.1 mm for the ice sheet. The mass loss is controlled at 66 [Formula: see text] 8% by glacier dynamics (9.1 mm) and 34 [Formula: see text] 8% by SMB (4.6 mm). Even in years of high SMB, enhanced glacier discharge has remained sufficiently high above equilibrium to maintain an annual mass loss every year since 1998.

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