Increased variability in Greenland Ice Sheet runoff from satellite observations
Runoff from the Greenland Ice Sheet has increased over recent decades affecting global sea level, regional ocean circulation, and coastal marine ecosystems, and it now accounts for most of the contemporary mass imbalance. Estimates of runoff are typically derived from regional climate models because...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:8560907 2023-05-15T16:28:00+02:00 Increased variability in Greenland Ice Sheet runoff from satellite observations Slater, Thomas Shepherd, Andrew McMillan, Malcolm Leeson, Amber Gilbert, Lin Muir, Alan Munneke, Peter Kuipers Noël, Brice Fettweis, Xavier van den Broeke, Michiel Briggs, Kate 2021-11-01 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8560907/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34725324 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26229-4 en eng Nature Publishing Group UK http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8560907/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34725324 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26229-4 © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . CC-BY Nat Commun Article Text 2021 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26229-4 2021-11-21T01:27:27Z Runoff from the Greenland Ice Sheet has increased over recent decades affecting global sea level, regional ocean circulation, and coastal marine ecosystems, and it now accounts for most of the contemporary mass imbalance. Estimates of runoff are typically derived from regional climate models because satellite records have been limited to assessments of melting extent. Here, we use CryoSat-2 satellite altimetry to produce direct measurements of Greenland’s runoff variability, based on seasonal changes in the ice sheet’s surface elevation. Between 2011 and 2020, Greenland’s ablation zone thinned on average by 1.4 ± 0.4 m each summer and thickened by 0.9 ± 0.4 m each winter. By adjusting for the steady-state divergence of ice, we estimate that runoff was 357 ± 58 Gt/yr on average – in close agreement with regional climate model simulations (root mean square difference of 47 to 60 Gt/yr). As well as being 21 % higher between 2011 and 2020 than over the preceding three decades, runoff is now also 60 % more variable from year-to-year as a consequence of large-scale fluctuations in atmospheric circulation. Because this variability is not captured in global climate model simulations, our satellite record of runoff should help to refine them and improve confidence in their projections. Text Greenland Ice Sheet PubMed Central (PMC) Greenland Nature Communications 12 1 |
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Article Slater, Thomas Shepherd, Andrew McMillan, Malcolm Leeson, Amber Gilbert, Lin Muir, Alan Munneke, Peter Kuipers Noël, Brice Fettweis, Xavier van den Broeke, Michiel Briggs, Kate Increased variability in Greenland Ice Sheet runoff from satellite observations |
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Runoff from the Greenland Ice Sheet has increased over recent decades affecting global sea level, regional ocean circulation, and coastal marine ecosystems, and it now accounts for most of the contemporary mass imbalance. Estimates of runoff are typically derived from regional climate models because satellite records have been limited to assessments of melting extent. Here, we use CryoSat-2 satellite altimetry to produce direct measurements of Greenland’s runoff variability, based on seasonal changes in the ice sheet’s surface elevation. Between 2011 and 2020, Greenland’s ablation zone thinned on average by 1.4 ± 0.4 m each summer and thickened by 0.9 ± 0.4 m each winter. By adjusting for the steady-state divergence of ice, we estimate that runoff was 357 ± 58 Gt/yr on average – in close agreement with regional climate model simulations (root mean square difference of 47 to 60 Gt/yr). As well as being 21 % higher between 2011 and 2020 than over the preceding three decades, runoff is now also 60 % more variable from year-to-year as a consequence of large-scale fluctuations in atmospheric circulation. Because this variability is not captured in global climate model simulations, our satellite record of runoff should help to refine them and improve confidence in their projections. |
format |
Text |
author |
Slater, Thomas Shepherd, Andrew McMillan, Malcolm Leeson, Amber Gilbert, Lin Muir, Alan Munneke, Peter Kuipers Noël, Brice Fettweis, Xavier van den Broeke, Michiel Briggs, Kate |
author_facet |
Slater, Thomas Shepherd, Andrew McMillan, Malcolm Leeson, Amber Gilbert, Lin Muir, Alan Munneke, Peter Kuipers Noël, Brice Fettweis, Xavier van den Broeke, Michiel Briggs, Kate |
author_sort |
Slater, Thomas |
title |
Increased variability in Greenland Ice Sheet runoff from satellite observations |
title_short |
Increased variability in Greenland Ice Sheet runoff from satellite observations |
title_full |
Increased variability in Greenland Ice Sheet runoff from satellite observations |
title_fullStr |
Increased variability in Greenland Ice Sheet runoff from satellite observations |
title_full_unstemmed |
Increased variability in Greenland Ice Sheet runoff from satellite observations |
title_sort |
increased variability in greenland ice sheet runoff from satellite observations |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group UK |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8560907/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34725324 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26229-4 |
geographic |
Greenland |
geographic_facet |
Greenland |
genre |
Greenland Ice Sheet |
genre_facet |
Greenland Ice Sheet |
op_source |
Nat Commun |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8560907/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34725324 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26229-4 |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
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CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26229-4 |
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Nature Communications |
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