Investigation of seasonal melting of Greenland using GPS records reveals significant ice mass loss in 2010

Greenland has experienced significant ice mass loss in the past decade. High-precision global positioning system (GPS) data from sites on the rocky margin of Greenland enable measurement of vertical motion of the coastal area, which is an indicator of nearby mass loss. In this study, seasonal melting variation of the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) is investigated using GPS vertical displacement data. Using a cubic spline fitting model, we retrieve three variables of the seasonal melting pattern for GrIS from 1996 to 2010: date of the beginning and end of melt season, length of melt season, and amount of uplift in the melt season. Data from three long -term sites on the periphery of Greenland show anomalously large uplift in 2010, implying significant melting in 2010. Preliminary results also show an early onset of melting in 2010, about 8 days earlier than the 1996-2009 average. In 2010, Greenland experienced a warmer and drier winter as well as a very warm summer, which presumably contributed to the anomalous ice mass loss of 2010.