Long-term and inter-annual mass changes of Patagonia Ice Field from GRACE

Abstract

Using more than 14 years of GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellite gravimetry observations, we estimate the ice loss rate for the Patagonia Ice Field (PIF) of South America. After correcting the effects of glacier isostatic adjustment (GIA) and hydrological variations, the ice loss rate is −23.5 ± 8.1 Giga ton per year (Gt/yr) during the period April 2002 through December 2016, equivalent to an average ice thickness change of −1.3 m/yr if evenly distributed over PIF. The PIF ice mass change series also show obvious inter-annual variations during the entire period. For the time spans April 2002 to December 2007, January 2008 to December 2012 and January 2013 to December 2016, the ice loss rates are −26.4, −9.0 and −25.0 Gt/yr, respectively, indicating that the ice melting experienced significant slowing down and accelerating again in the past decade. Comparison with time series from temperature and precipitation data over PIF suggests that the inter-annual ice losses might not be directly correlated with the temperature changes and precipitation anomalies, and thus their interrelation is intricate. However, the dramatic ice loss acceleration in 2016 (with more than 100 Gt within the first half of the year) appears closely related with the evident temperature increase and severe precipitation shortage over 2016, which are likely correlated with the strong El Niño event around 2016. Moreover, we compare the GRACE spherical harmonic (SH) and mass concentration (Mascon) solutions in estimating the PIF ice loss rate, and find that the Mascon result has larger uncertainty in leakage error correction, while the SH solutions can better correct leakage errors based on a constrained forward modeling iterative method. Thus the GRACE SH solutions with constrained forward modeling recovery are recommended to evaluating the ice mass change of PIF or other glacier regions with relatively smaller spatial scales.