Mass loss of the Greenland ice sheet from GRACE time-variable gravity measurements

Abstract

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite data is used to estimate the rate of ice mass variability over Greenland. To do this, monthly GRACE level 2 Release-04 (RL04) data from three different processing centers, Center for Space Research (CSR), German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) and Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL) were used during the period April 2002 to February 2010. It should be noted that some months are missing for all three data sets. Results of computations provide a mass decrease of -163 ± 20 Gigaton per year (Gt/yr) based on CSR-RL04 data, -161 ± 21 Gt/yr based on GFZ-RL04 data and -84 ± 26 Gt/yr based on JPL RL04.1. The results are derived by the application of a non-isotropic filter whose degree of smoothing corresponds to a Gaussian filter with a radius of 340 km. Striping effects in the GRACE data, C20 effect, and leakage effects are taken into the consideration in the computations. There is some significant spread of the results among different processing centers of GRACE solutions; however, estimates achieved in this study are in agreement with the results obtained from alternative GRACE solutions.

Mass loss of the Greenland ice sheet from GRACE time-variable gravity measurements