GRACE, time-varying gravity, Earth system dynamics and climate change

Continuous observations of temporal variations in the Earth's gravity field have recently become available at an unprecedented resolution of a few hundreds of kilometers. The gravity field is a product of the Earth's mass distribution, and these data—provided by the satellites of the Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE)—can be used to...

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...

Present Day Regional Mass Loss of Greenland Observed with Satellite Gravimetry

This paper summarizes results obtained for Greenland’s mass balance observed with NASA’s GRACE mission. We estimate a Greenland ice sheet mass loss at ?201 ± 19 Gt/year including a discernible acceleration of ?8 ± 7 Gt/year2 between March 2003 and February 2010. The mass loss of glacier systems on the South East of Greenland has slowed down...

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...

Identification and Modeling of Sea Level Change Contributors: On GRACE satellite gravity data and their applications to climate monitoring

Since early 2002, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) twin satellite mission provide the scientific community with accurate monthly maps of the Earth's gravity field. On short time-scale, the observed variations are mainly related to a redistribution of water on the Earth's surface. This new data set has lead to a leap forward in...

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...

Comparison of in situ bottom pressure data with GRACE gravimetry in the Crozet-Kerguelen region

Two time series of deep ocean bottom pressure records (BPRs) in between the Crozet Islands and Kerguelen are compared with GRACE (Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment) equivalent water heights. An analysis of the correlation is performed for four time series: 1) monthly averages of the equivalent water height at the Crozet Islands, 2) the...