2019•GEUS BulletinOpen access
Greenland ice sheet mass balance assessed by PROMICE (1995–2015)
William Colgan, Kenneth D. Mankoff, Kristian K. Kjeldsen, Anders Anker Bjørk, Jason E. Box, Sebastian B. Simonsen, Louise Sandberg Sørensen, Shfaqat Abbas Khan, Anne Solgaard, R. Forsberg, Henriette Skourup, Lars Stenseng, Steen Savstrup Kristensen, Sine Munk Hvidegaard, M. Citterio, Nanna B. Karlsson, Xavier Fettweis, Andreas P. Ahlstrøm, S. B. Andersen, D. van As, Robert S. Fausto
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Abstract
The Programme for Monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet (PROMICE) has measured ice-sheet elevation and thickness via repeat airborne surveys circumscribing the ice sheet at an average elevation of 1708 ± 5 m (Sørensen et al. 2018). We refer to this 5415 km survey as the ‘PROMICE perimeter’. Here, we assess ice-sheet mass balance following the input-output approach of Andersen et al. (2015). We estimate ice-sheet output, or the ice discharge across the ice-sheet grounding line, by applying downstream corrections to the ice flux across the PROMICE perimeter. We subtract this ice discharge from ice-sheet input, or the area-integrated, ice sheet surface mass balance, estimated by a regional climate model. While Andersen et al. (2015) assessed ice-sheet mass balance in 2007 and 2011, this updated input-output assessment now estimates the annual sea-level rise contribution from eighteen sub-sectors of the Greenland ice sheet over the 1995–2015 period.
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