Separating Long-Term and Short-Term Mass Changes of Antarctic Ice Drainage Basins: A Coupled State Space Analysis of Satellite Observations and Model Products

Satellite gravimetry and altimetry measurements record gravity and elevation changes, respectively, which are useful for determining mass and volume change of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Common methods employ products from regional climate modeling and firn modeling to aid interpretation and to link volume changes to mass changes. Estimating...

Global glacier mass loss during the GRACE satellite mission (2002-2016)

Glaciers outside of the ice sheets are known to be important contributors to sea level rise. In this work, we provide an overview of changes in the mass of the world's glaciers, excluding those in Greenland and Antarctica, between 2002 and 2016, based on satellite gravimetry observations of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE)....

Evaluating GRACE Mass Change Time Series for the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheet—Methods and Results

Satellite gravimetry data acquired by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) allows to derive the temporal evolution in ice mass for both the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) and the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS). Various algorithms have been used in a wide range of studies to generate Gravimetric Mass Balance (GMB) products. Results from...

A mascon approach to assess ice sheet and glacier mass balances and their uncertainties from GRACE data

The purpose of this paper is to assess the mass changes of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS), Ice Sheets over Antarctica, and Land glaciers and Ice Caps with a global mascon method that yields monthly mass variations at 10,242 mascons. Input for this method are level 2 data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) system collected...

Revisiting Greenland ice sheet mass loss observed by GRACE

In this paper we discuss a new method for determining mass time series for 16 hydrological basins representing the Greenland system (GS) whereby we rely on Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission data. In the same analysis we also considered observed mass changes over Ellesmere Island, Baffin Island, Iceland, and Svalbard (EBIS)....

Seasonal variations in sea level induced by continental water mass: First results from GRACE

Variations in the Earth's water cycle are commonly quantified by their effect on global mean sea?level. However, the interaction between passive adjustment of the ocean to changes in gravitational attraction due to mass redistribution, the related deformation of the solid Earth and disturbances in the Earth's rotation vector will yield a...

Sea?level fingerprint of continental water and ice mass change from GRACE

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellites (GRACE) provide, for the first time, a method to directly measure mass exchange between the land and oceans over time. The dominant components of this exchange are due to continental ice loss/gain and land hydrology. Here, we determine the secular trend in these two components during the...

GRACE observes small?scale mass loss in Greenland

Using satellite gravity data between February 2003 and January 2008, we examine changes in Greenland's mass distribution on a regional scale. During this period, Greenland lost mass at a mean rate of 179 ± 25 Gt/yr, equivalent to a global mean sea level change of 0.5 ± 0.1 mm/yr. Rates increase over time, suggesting an acceleration of the mass...

Improved accuracy of GRACE gravity solutions through empirical orthogonal function filtering of spherical harmonics

One of the major problems one has to deal with when working with Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) data is the increasing error spectrum at higher degrees in the provided Stokes coefficients, appearing as unphysical North?South striping patterns in the maps of equivalent water height (EWH). This phenomenon is commonly suppressed by...

Signal and noise in Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) observed surface mass variations

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) product used for this study consists of 43 monthly potential coefficient sets released by the GRACE science team which are used to generate surface mass thickness grids expressed as equivalent water heights (EQWHs). We optimized both the smoothing radius and the level of approximation by...