Greenland surface processes from PROMICE automatic weather station measurements and Sentinel-3 satellite observations
Abstract
The Programme for Monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet (PROMICE) provides surface meteorological and glaciological measurements from more than 20 widespread automatic weather stations since mid 2007. In this study, we use 105 PROMICE ice ablation time series in order to identify the timing of bare ice onset preceded by seasonal snow cover conditions. We find a bare ice albedo of 0.565±0.109 corresponding with average ice ablation onset. We proceed to build and analyze multi station-year averages synchronized to the emergence of bare ice for air temperature, snow thickness, ice ablation and albedo. We then apply this snow to ice albedo transition value to measure the daily Greenland bare ice area variations in Sentinel-3 satellite imagery covering the extremely low and high respective melt years of 2018 and 2019. In 2019, daily Greenland bare ice area peaked at 161,650 km², 1.9 times larger than in 2018 (85,986 km²), covering respectively 9.4% and 5.0% of the Greenland ice sheet.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMA235...02W
- Keywords:
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- 3349 Polar meteorology;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 0740 Snowmelt;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 0762 Mass balance;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 0764 Energy balance;
- CRYOSPHERE