Abstract

The melting of the polar ice caps is considered to be an essential factor for global sea-level rise and has received significant attention. Quantitative research on ice cap mass changes is critical in global climate change. In this study, GRACE JPL RL06 data under the Mascon scheme based on the dynamic method were used. Greenland, which is highly sensitive to climate change, was selected as the study area. Greenland was divided into six sub-research regions, according to its watersheds. The spatial–temporal mass changes were compared to corresponding temperature and precipitation statistics to analyze the relationship between changes in ice sheet mass and climate change. The results show that: (i) From February 2002 to September 2019, the rate of change in the Greenland Ice Sheet mass was about −263 ± 13 Gt yr−1 and the areas with the most substantial ice sheet loss and climate changes were concentrated in the western and southern parts of Greenland. (ii) The mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet during the study period was at a loss, and this was closely related to increasing trends in temperature and precipitation. (iii) In the coastal areas of western and southern Greenland, the rate of mass change has accelerated significantly, mainly because of climate change.

Highlights

  • The two poles of the Earth are vast ice freshwater storehouses

  • The Greenland Ice Sheet mass changes obtained in this study show two stages: a positive mass accumulation from 2002 to 2006 and a mass ablation from 2007 to 2019

  • The area of ice sheet ablation was mainly concentrated in the marginal area, while in the central area, the mass of the ice sheet increased first and decreased. (ii) Among the six watersheds considered, SW, southern low-latitude area (SE), NW, and CW had a faster rate of mass decrease of −79.591 Gt yr−1, −69.631 Gt yr−1, −59.796 Gt yr−1, −54.987 Gt yr−1 and −26.87 Gt yr−1, respectively

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Summary

Introduction

The two poles of the Earth are vast ice freshwater storehouses. Ice sheets account for about 97% of the area of global glaciers and 99% of the total ice volume. The data are given in equivalent water thickness (unit: cm) [29,30,31] In this manuscript, JPL RL06 (CRI) data uses the Mascon solution based on the principle of dynamics, which provides a monthly gravity field change generated by 4551 equal-area 3◦ grids, of the size of about 330 km; a coastline resolution is applied to improve filtering (CRI) to separate the mass of land and ocean from a single mascon across the coastline. A solution based on Level 1B data replaces the C20 measured by GRACE satellites with C20 items from SLR data [32] and the Peltier ICE6G-D model [33] In this approach the data plan has completed the glacier isostatic pressure adjustment (GIA) correction, improving the results from the inversion mass change. The final JPL RL06 data is in the NetCDF format with a spatial resolution of 1◦ [R3e4m,o3te5S].ens. 2020, 12, x FOR PEER REVIEW

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