|
Greenland's rising air temperatures drive ice loss at surface and beyond
February 21, 2008A new NASA study confirms that the surface temperature of Greenland's massive ice sheet has been rising, stoked by warming air temperatures, and fueling loss of the island's ice at the surface and throughout the mass beneath.
Greenland's enormous ice sheet is home to enough ice to raise sea level by about 23 feet if the entire ice sheet were to melt into surrounding waters. Though the loss of the whole ice sheet is unlikely, loss from Greenland's ice mass has already contributed in part to 20th century sea level rise of about two millimeters per year, and future melt has the potential to impact people and economies across the globe. So NASA scientists used state-of-the-art NASA satellite technologies to explore the behavior of the ice sheet, revealing a relationship between changes at the surface and below. The new NASA study appears in the January issue of the quarterly Journal of Glaciology.
"The relationship between surface temperature and mass loss lends further credence to earlier work showing rapid response of the ice sheet to surface meltwater," said Dorothy Hall, a senior researcher in Cryospheric Sciences at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Md., and lead author of the study.
A team led by Hall used temperature data captured each day from 2000 through 2006 from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite. They measured changes in the surface temperature to within about one degree of accuracy from about 440 miles away in space. They also measured melt area within each of the six major drainage basins of the ice sheet to see whether melt has become more extensive and longer lasting, and to see how the various parts of the ice sheet are reacting to increasing air temperatures.
The team took their research at the ice sheet's surface a step further, becoming the first to pair the surface temperature data with satellite gravity data to investigate what internal ice changes occur as the surface melts. Geophysicist and co-author, Scott Luthcke, also of NASA Goddard, developed a mathematical solution, using gravity data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) twin satellite system. "This solution has permitted greatly-improved detail in both time and space, allowing measurement of mass change at the low-elevation coastal regions of the ice sheet where most of the melting is occurring," said Luthcke.
The paired surface temperature and gravity data confirm a strong connection between melting on ice sheet surfaces in areas below 6,500 feet in elevation, and ice loss throughout the ice sheet's giant mass. The result led Hall's team to conclude that the start of surface melting triggers mass loss of ice over large areas of the ice sheet.
The beginning of mass loss is highly sensitive to even minor amounts of surface melt. Hall and her colleagues showed that when less than two percent of the lower reaches of the ice sheet begins to melt at the surface, mass loss of ice can result. For example, in 2004 and 2005, the GRACE satellites recorded the onset of rapid subsurface ice loss less than 15 days after surface melting was captured by the Terra satellite.
"We're seeing a close correspondence between the date that surface melting begins, and the date that mass loss of ice begins beneath the surface," Hall said. "This indicates that the meltwater from the surface must be traveling down to the base of the ice sheet -- through over a mile of ice -- very rapidly, where its presence allows the ice at the base to slide forward, speeding the flow of outlet glaciers that discharge icebergs and water into the surrounding ocean."
Hall underscores the importance of combining results from multiple NASA satellites to improve understanding of the ice sheet's behavior. "We find that when we look at results from different satellite sensors and those results agree, the confidence in the conclusions is very high," said Hall.
Hall and her colleagues believe that air temperature increases are responsible for increasing ice sheet surface temperatures and thus more-extensive surface melt. "If air temperatures continue rising over Greenland, surface melt will continue to play a large role in the overall loss of ice mass." She also noted that the team's detailed study using the high-resolution MODIS data show that various parts of the ice sheet are reacting differently to air temperature increases, perhaps reacting to different climate-driven forces. This is important because much of the southern coastal area of the ice sheet is already near the melting point (0 degrees Celsius) during the summer.
Changes in Greenland's ice sheet surface temperature have been measured by satellites dating back to 1981. "Earlier work has shown increasing surface temperatures from 1981 to the present," said Hall. "However, additional years with more accurate and finer resolution data now available using Terra's imager are providing more information on the surface temperature within individual basins on the ice sheet, and about trends in ice sheet surface temperature. Combining this data with data from GRACE, arms us with better tools to establish the relationship between surface melting and loss of ice mass."
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
A team led by Hall used temperature data captured each day from 2000 through 2006 from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite. They measured changes in the surface temperature to within about one degree of accuracy from about 440 miles away in space. They also measured melt area within each of the six major drainage basins of the ice sheet to see whether melt has become more extensive and longer lasting, and to see how the various parts of the ice sheet are reacting to increasing air temperatures.
The team took their research at the ice sheet's surface a step further, becoming the first to pair the surface temperature data with satellite gravity data to investigate what internal ice changes occur as the surface melts. Geophysicist and co-author, Scott Luthcke, also of NASA Goddard, developed a mathematical solution, using gravity data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) twin satellite system. "This solution has permitted greatly-improved detail in both time and space, allowing measurement of mass change at the low-elevation coastal regions of the ice sheet where most of the melting is occurring," said Luthcke.
The paired surface temperature and gravity data confirm a strong connection between melting on ice sheet surfaces in areas below 6,500 feet in elevation, and ice loss throughout the ice sheet's giant mass. The result led Hall's team to conclude that the start of surface melting triggers mass loss of ice over large areas of the ice sheet.
The beginning of mass loss is highly sensitive to even minor amounts of surface melt. Hall and her colleagues showed that when less than two percent of the lower reaches of the ice sheet begins to melt at the surface, mass loss of ice can result. For example, in 2004 and 2005, the GRACE satellites recorded the onset of rapid subsurface ice loss less than 15 days after surface melting was captured by the Terra satellite.
"We're seeing a close correspondence between the date that surface melting begins, and the date that mass loss of ice begins beneath the surface," Hall said. "This indicates that the meltwater from the surface must be traveling down to the base of the ice sheet -- through over a mile of ice -- very rapidly, where its presence allows the ice at the base to slide forward, speeding the flow of outlet glaciers that discharge icebergs and water into the surrounding ocean."
Hall underscores the importance of combining results from multiple NASA satellites to improve understanding of the ice sheet's behavior. "We find that when we look at results from different satellite sensors and those results agree, the confidence in the conclusions is very high," said Hall.
Hall and her colleagues believe that air temperature increases are responsible for increasing ice sheet surface temperatures and thus more-extensive surface melt. "If air temperatures continue rising over Greenland, surface melt will continue to play a large role in the overall loss of ice mass." She also noted that the team's detailed study using the high-resolution MODIS data show that various parts of the ice sheet are reacting differently to air temperature increases, perhaps reacting to different climate-driven forces. This is important because much of the southern coastal area of the ice sheet is already near the melting point (0 degrees Celsius) during the summer.
Changes in Greenland's ice sheet surface temperature have been measured by satellites dating back to 1981. "Earlier work has shown increasing surface temperatures from 1981 to the present," said Hall. "However, additional years with more accurate and finer resolution data now available using Terra's imager are providing more information on the surface temperature within individual basins on the ice sheet, and about trends in ice sheet surface temperature. Combining this data with data from GRACE, arms us with better tools to establish the relationship between surface melting and loss of ice mass."
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Ice Sheet News and Current Ice Sheet Events RSSWilkins Ice Shelf hanging by its last thread
The Wilkins Ice Shelf is experiencing further disintegration that is threatening the collapse of the ice bridge connecting the shelf to Charcot Island. Since the connection to the island in the image centre helps to stabilise the ice shelf, it is likely the break-up of the bridge will put the remainder of the ice shelf at risk.
Unravelling the 'inconvenient truth' of glacier movement
Predicting climate change depends on many factors not properly included in current forecasting models, such as how the major polar ice caps will move in the event of melting around their edges.
Greenland ice core analysis shows drastic climate change near end of last ice age
Information gleaned from a Greenland ice core by an international science team shows that two huge Northern Hemisphere temperature spikes prior to the close of the last ice age some 11,500 years ago were tied to fundamental shifts in atmospheric circulation.
Data show Antarctic ice stream radiating seismically
A seismologist at Washington University in St. Louis and colleagues at Pennsylvania State University and Newcastle University in the United Kingdom have found seismic signals from a giant river of ice in Antarctica that makes California's earthquake problem seem trivial.
Scientists endure Arctic for last campaign prior to CryoSat-2 launch
An international group of scientists has swapped their comfortable offices for one of the most inhospitable environments on the planet to carry out a challenging field campaign that is seen as the key to ensuring the data delivered by ESA's ice mission CryoSat will be as accurate as possible.
Climate Models Overheat Antarctica, New Study Finds
Computer analyses of global climate have consistently overstated warming in Antarctica, concludes new research by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Ohio State University.
'New' ancient Antarctic sediment reveals climate change history
Recent additions to the premier collection of Southern Ocean sediment cores at Florida State University's Antarctic Marine Geology Research Facility will give international scientists a close-up look at fluctuations that occurred in Antarctica's ice sheet and marine and terrestrial life as the climate cooled considerably between 20 and 14 million years ago.
Researchers warm up to melt's role in Greenland ice loss
In July 2006, researchers afloat in a dinghy on a mile-wide glacial lake in Greenland studied features of the lake and ice 40 feet below. Ten days later the entire contents of the lake emptied through a crack in the ice with a force equaling the pummeling water of Niagara Falls. The entire process only took 90 minutes.
Has the mystery of the Antarctic ice sheet been solved?
A team of scientists from Cardiff University's School of Earth and Ocean Sciences and Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales travelled to Africa to find new evidence of climate change which helps explain some of the mystery surrounding the appearance of the Antarctic ice sheet.
UNH-NOAA ocean mapping expedition yields new insights into arctic depths
New Arctic sea floor data released today by the University of New Hampshire and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggests that the foot of the continental slope off Alaska is more than 100 nautical miles farther from the U.S. coast than previously assumed.
More Ice Sheet News Articles
| © 2008 BrightSurf.com |