Trends in ice sheet mass balance, 1992 to 2017
Abstract
The Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-Comparison Exercise (IMBIE) is a community effort, jointly supported by ESA and NASA, that aims to provide a consensus estimate of ice sheet mass balance from satellite gravimetry, altimetry and mass budget assessments, on an annual basis. The project has five experiment groups, one for each of the satellite techniques and two others to analyse surface mass balance (SMB) and glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA). The basic premise for the exercise is that individual ice sheet mass balance datasets are generated by project participants using common spatial and temporal domains to allow meaningful inter-comparison, and this controlled comparison in turn supports aggregation of the individual datasets over their full period. Participation is open to the full community, and the quality and consistency of submissions is regulated through a series of data standards and documentation requirements. The second phase of IMBIE commenced in 2015, with participant data submitted in 2016 and a combined estimate due for public release in 2017. Data from 48 participant groups were submitted to one of the three satellite mass balance technique groups or to the ancillary dataset groups. The individual mass balance estimates and ancillary datasets have been compared and combined within the respective groups. Following this, estimates of ice sheet mass balance derived from the individual techniques were then compared and combined. The result is single estimates of ice sheet mass balance for Greenland, East Antarctica, West Antarctica, and the Antarctic Peninsula. The participants, methodology and results of the exercise will be presented in this paper.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFM.G23B..01S
- Keywords:
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- 1217 Time variable gravity;
- GEODESY AND GRAVITY;
- 1218 Mass balance;
- GEODESY AND GRAVITY;
- 1223 Ocean/Earth/atmosphere/hydrosphere/cryosphere interactions;
- GEODESY AND GRAVITY;
- 1876 Water budgets;
- HYDROLOGY