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Greenland mass variation from time‐variable gravity in the absence of GRACE
Author(s) -
Baur O.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/grl.50881
Subject(s) - geodesy , deglaciation , satellite , greenland ice sheet , geology , groenlandia , gravitational field , orbit (dynamics) , spacecraft , climatology , environmental science , ice sheet , oceanography , physics , holocene , astronomy , aerospace engineering , engineering
In a recent paper, the authors succeeded in the inference of time‐variable gravity from orbit analysis of the CHAMP satellite. The authors demonstrated the potential of the adopted methods by validation against GRACE data and surface height changes from GPS ground stations. This paper presents the capability of orbit analysis for the spatiotemporal quantification of Greenland mass change trends. Based on CHAMP time‐variable gravity fields from January 2003 to December 2009, we estimated the ice mass loss over the entire of Greenland to 246±10 Gt/yr. This result is in line with the findings from GRACE data analysis (223±10 Gt/yr) over the same period; the trend estimates differ by only 10%. Moreover, for some areas, the spatial mass variation patterns are in good agreement, pinpointing dominant deglaciation along the Greenland coastline. We conclude that orbit analysis of low‐Earth orbiting spacecraft is suitable to assess Greenland mass balance in the absence of the GRACE satellites.