Trend of mass change in the Antarctic ice sheet recovered from the GRACE temporal gravity field

2011 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
ZhiCai Luo ◽  
Qiong Li ◽  
Kun Zhang ◽  
HaiHong Wang
Keyword(s):  
Gravity Field ◽  
Ice Sheet ◽  
Mass Change ◽  
Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
The Antarctic ◽  
Temporal Gravity

scholarly journals A Joint Inversion Estimate of Antarctic Ice Sheet Mass Balance Using Multi-Geodetic Data Sets

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 653 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chunchun Gao ◽  
Yang Lu ◽  
Zizhan Zhang ◽  
Hongling Shi
Keyword(s):  
Mass Balance ◽  
Joint Inversion ◽  
Ice Sheet ◽  
Mass Change ◽  
West Antarctica ◽  
Amundsen Sea ◽  
Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
Forward Models ◽  
Uplift Rates ◽  
The Antarctic

Many recent mass balance estimates using the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and satellite altimetry (including two kinds of sensors of radar and laser) show that the ice mass of the Antarctic ice sheet (AIS) is in overall decline. However, there are still large differences among previously published estimates of the total mass change, even in the same observed periods. The considerable error sources mainly arise from the forward models (e.g., glacial isostatic adjustment [GIA] and firn compaction) that may be uncertain but indispensable to simulate some processes not directly measured or obtained by these observations. To minimize the use of these forward models, we estimate the mass change of ice sheet and present-day GIA using multi-geodetic observations, including GRACE and Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat), as well as Global Positioning System (GPS), by an improved method of joint inversion estimate (JIE), which enables us to solve simultaneously for the Antarctic GIA and ice mass trends. The GIA uplift rates generated from our JIE method show a good agreement with the elastic-corrected GPS uplift rates, and the total GIA-induced mass change estimate for the AIS is 54 ± 27 Gt/yr, which is in line with many recent GPS calibrated GIA estimates. Our GIA result displays the presence of significant uplift rates in the Amundsen Sea Embayment of West Antarctica, where strong uplift has been observed by GPS. Over the period February 2003 to October 2009, the entire AIS changed in mass by −84 ± 31 Gt/yr (West Antarctica: −69 ± 24, East Antarctica: 12 ± 16 and the Antarctic Peninsula: −27 ± 8), greater than the GRACE-only estimates obtained from three Mascon solutions (CSR: −50 ± 30, JPL: −71 ± 30, and GSFC: −51 ± 33 Gt/yr) for the same period. This may imply that single GRACE data tend to underestimate ice mass loss due to the signal leakage and attenuation errors of ice discharge are often worse than that of surface mass balance over the AIS.

scholarly journals Estimation of present-day glacial isostatic adjustment, ice mass change and elastic vertical crustal deformation over the Antarctic ice sheet

2017 ◽  
Vol 63 (240) ◽  
pp. 703-715 ◽  
Author(s):  
BAOJUN ZHANG ◽  
ZEMIN WANG ◽  
FEI LI ◽  
JIACHUN AN ◽  
YUANDE YANG ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Antarctic Peninsula ◽  
Crustal Deformation ◽  
Ice Sheet ◽  
East Antarctica ◽  
Mass Change ◽  
Glacial Isostatic Adjustment ◽  
Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
Isostatic Adjustment ◽  
The Antarctic ◽  
Vertical Crustal Deformation

ABSTRACTThis study explores an iterative method for simultaneously estimating the present-day glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), ice mass change and elastic vertical crustal deformation of the Antarctic ice sheet (AIS) for the period October 2003–October 2009. The estimations are derived by combining mass measurements of the GRACE mission and surface height observations of the ICESat mission under the constraint of GPS vertical crustal deformation rates in the spatial domain. The influence of active subglacial lakes on GIA estimates are mitigated for the first time through additional processing of ICESat data. The inferred GIA shows that the strongest uplift is found in the Amundsen Sea Embayment (ASE) sector and subsidence mostly occurs in Adelie Terre and the East Antarctica inland. The total GIA-related mass change estimates for the entire AIS, West Antarctica Ice Sheet (WAIS), East Antarctica Ice Sheet (EAIS), and Antarctic Peninsula Ice Sheet (APIS) are 43 ± 38, 53 ± 24, −23 ± 29 and 13 ± 6 Gt a−1, respectively. The overall ice mass change of the AIS is −46 ± 43 Gt a−1 (WAIS: −104 ± 25, EAIS: 77 ± 35, APIS: −20 ± 6). The most significant ice mass loss and most significant elastic vertical crustal deformations are concentrated in the ASE and northern Antarctic Peninsula.

scholarly journals Response of Antarctic Ice Sheet Mass Balance to Climate Change

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jingang Zhan ◽  
Hongling Shi ◽  
Yong Wang ◽  
Yixin Yao ◽  
Yongbin Wu
Keyword(s):  
Surface Temperature ◽  
Mass Balance ◽  
Ice Sheet ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Principal Component ◽  
Equatorial Pacific ◽  
Sea Surface ◽  
Mass Change ◽  
Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
The Antarctic

Abstract. The ice record should have recorded and will likely reflect information on environmental changes such as atmospheric circulation. In this paper, 153 months of Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite time-varying gravity solutions were used to study the principal components of the Antarctic ice sheet mass change and their time-frequency variation. This assessment is based on complex principal component analysis and the wavelet amplitude-period spectrum method to reveal the main climatic factors that affect the change on the ice sheet. The complex principal component analysis results reveal the principal components that affect the mass change of the ice sheet; the wavelet analysis present the time-frequency variation of each component and the possible relationship between each principal component and different climatic factors. The results show that the specific climate factors represented by low-frequency signals with a period greater than 5 years dominate the changes of the Antarctic ice sheet mass balance. These climate factors are related to the abnormal sea surface temperature changes in the equatorial Pacific (Niño 1+2 region), the correlation between the low-frequency periodic signal of sea surface temperature anomalies in the equatorial Pacific and the first principal component of the ice sheet mass change in Antarctica is 0.65. The first principal component explains 85.45 % of the mass change in the ice sheet. The change in the meridional wind at 700 hPa in the South Pacific may be the key factor that determines the effect of sea surface temperature anomalies in the equatorial Pacific on the Antarctic ice sheet. The atmospheric temperature change in Antarctica is the second most important factor that affects the mass balance of the ice sheet in the area, and its contribution to the mass balance of the ice sheet is only 6.35 %. This result means that with the increase of low-frequency signals during the El Niño period, Antarctic ice sheet mass changes may intensify.

scholarly journals The influence of Antarctic ice loss on polar motion: an assessment based on GRACE and multi-mission satellite altimetry

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Franziska Göttl ◽  
Andreas Groh ◽  
Michael Schmidt ◽  
Ludwig Schröder ◽  
Florian Seitz
Keyword(s):  
Gravity Field ◽  
Polar Motion ◽  
Satellite Altimetry ◽  
Motion Vector ◽  
Ice Sheet ◽  
Position Vector ◽  
Random Errors ◽  
Excitation Functions ◽  
Antarctic Ice Sheet ◽  
The Antarctic

AbstractIncreasing ice loss of the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) due to global climate change affects the orientation of the Earth’s spin axis with respect to an Earth-fixed reference system (polar motion). Here the contribution of the decreasing AIS to the excitation of polar motion is quantified from precise time variable gravity field observations of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and from measurements of the changing ice sheet elevation from altimeter satellites. While the GRACE gravity field models need to be reduced by noise and leakage effects from neighboring subsystems, the ice volume changes observed by satellite altimetry have to be converted into ice mass changes. In this study we investigate how much individual gravimetry and altimetry solutions differ from each other. We show that due to combination of individual solutions systematic and random errors of the data processing can be reduced and the robustness of the geodetic derived AIS polar motion excitations can be increased. We investigate the interannual variability of the Antarctic polar motion excitation functions by means of piecewise linear trends. We find that the long-term behavior of the three ice sheet subregions: EAIS (East Antarctic Ice Sheet), WAIS (West Antarctic Ice Sheet) and APIS (Antarctic Peninsula Ice Sheet) is quite different. While APIS polar motion excitations show no significant interannual variations during the study period $$2003-2015$$ 2003 - 2015 , the trend of the WAIS and EAIS polar motion excitations increased in 2006 and again in 2009 while it started slightly to decline in 2013. AIS mass changes explain about $$45\%$$ 45 % of the observed magnitude of the polar motion vector (excluding glacial isosatic adjustment). They cause the pole position vector to drift along $$59^{\circ }$$ 59 ∘ East longitude with an amplitude of 2.7 mas/yr. Thus the contribution of the AIS has to be considered to close the budget of the geophysical excitation functions of polar motion.

scholarly journals Complex Principal Component Analysis of Antarctic Ice Sheet Mass Balance

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 480
Author(s):  
Jingang Zhan ◽  
Hongling Shi ◽  
Yong Wang ◽  
Yixin Yao
Keyword(s):  
Principal Component Analysis ◽  
Ice Sheet ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Principal Component ◽  
Equatorial Pacific ◽  
Mass Change ◽  
Frequency Variation ◽  
Periodic Signal ◽  
Time Frequency ◽  
The Antarctic

Ice sheet changes of the Antarctic are the result of interactions among the ocean, atmosphere, and ice sheet. Studying the ice sheet mass variations helps us to understand the possible reasons for these changes. We used 164 months of Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite time-varying solutions to study the principal components (PCs) of the Antarctic ice sheet mass change and their time-frequency variation. This assessment was based on complex principal component analysis (CPCA) and the wavelet amplitude-period spectrum (WAPS) method to study the PCs and their time-frequency information. The CPCA results revealed the PCs that affect the ice sheet balance, and the wavelet analysis exposed the time-frequency variation of the quasi-periodic signal in each component. The results show that the first PC, which has a linear term and low-frequency signals with periods greater than five years, dominates the variation trend of ice sheet in the Antarctic. The ratio of its variance to the total variance shows that the first PC explains 83.73% of the mass change in the ice sheet. Similar low-frequency signals are also found in the meridional wind at 700 hPa in the South Pacific and the sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) in the equatorial Pacific, with the correlation between the low-frequency periodic signal of SSTA in the equatorial Pacific and the first PC of the ice sheet mass change in Antarctica found to be 0.73. The phase signals in the mass change of West Antarctica indicate the upstream propagation of mass loss information over time from the ocean–ice interface to the southward upslope, which mainly reflects ocean-driven factors such as enhanced ice–ocean interaction and the intrusion of warm saline water into the cavities under ice shelves associated with ice sheets which sit on retrograde slopes. Meanwhile, the phase signals in the mass change of East Antarctica indicate the downstream propagation of mass increase information from the South Pole toward Dronning Maud Land, which mainly reflects atmospheric factors such as precipitation accumulation.

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