Thermally incised meltwater channels that flow each summer across melt-prone surfaces of the Greenland ice sheet have received little direct study. We use high-resolution WorldView-1/2 satellite mapping and in situ measurements to characterize supraglacial water storage, drainage pattern, and discharge across 6,812 km 2 of southwest Greenland in July 2012, after a record melt event. Efficient surface drainage was routed through 523 high-order stream/river channel networks, all of which terminated in moulins before reaching the ice edge. Low surface water storage (3.6 ± 0.9 cm), negligible impoundment by supraglacial lakes or topographic depressions, and high discharge to moulins (2.54-2.81 cm·d) indicate that the surface drainage system conveyed its own storage volume every <2 d to the bed. Moulin discharges mapped inside ∼52% of the source ice watershed for Isortoq, a major proglacial river, totaled ∼41-98% of observed proglacial discharge, highlighting the importance of supraglacial river drainage to true outflow from the ice edge. However, Isortoq discharges tended lower than runoff simulations from the Modèle Atmosphérique Régional (MAR) regional climate model (0.056-0.112 km ), and when integrated over the melt season, totaled just 37-75% of MAR, suggesting nontrivial subglacial water storage even in this melt-prone region of the ice sheet. We conclude that (i) the interior surface of the ice sheet can be efficiently drained under optimal conditions, (ii) that digital elevation models alone cannot fully describe supraglacial drainage and its connection to subglacial systems, and (iii) that predicting outflow from climate models alone, without recognition of subglacial processes, may overestimate true meltwater export from the ice sheet to the ocean.Greenland ice sheet | supraglacial hydrology | meltwater runoff | mass balance | remote sensing M eltwater runoff from the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) accounts for half or more of its total mass loss to the global ocean (1, 2) but remains one of the least-studied hydrologic processes on Earth. Each summer, a complex system of supraglacial meltwater ponds, lakes, streams, rivers, and moulins develops across large areas of the southwestern GrIS surface, especially below ∼1,300 m elevation (3-7), with supraglacial erosion driven by thermal and radiative processes (5). Digital elevation models (DEMs) suggest a poorly drained surface resulting from abundant topographic depressions, which computational flow routing models must artificially "fill" to allow hydrological flow paths extending from the ice sheet interior to its edge (8-11). The realism of such modeled flow paths remains largely untested by real-world observations. To date, most observational studies of GrIS supraglacial hydrology have focused on large lakes (∼1 km 2

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Abstract. The surface energy balance and meltwater production of the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) are modulated by snow and ice albedo through the amount of absorbed solar radiation. Here we show, using spaceborne multispectral data collected during the three decades from 1981 to 2012, that summertime surface albedo over the GrIS decreased at a statistically significant (99 %) rate of 0.02 decade-1 between 1996 and 2012. The negative trend is confined to the regions of the GrIS that undergo melting in summer with the dry-snow zone showing no trend. The period 1981–1996 showed no statistically significant trend. The analysis of the outputs of a regional climate model indicates that the drivers of the observed albedo decrease is imputable to a combination of increased near-surface temperatures, which enhanced melt and promoted growth in snow grain size and the expansion of bare ice areas, as well as by trends in light-absorbing impurities on the snow and ice surfaces. Neither aerosol models nor in situ observations indicate increasing trends in impurities in the atmosphere over Greenland, suggesting that their apparent increase in snow and ice might be related to the exposure of a "dark band" of dirty ice and to the consolidation of impurities at the surface with melt. Albedo projections through the end of the century under different warming scenarios consistently point to continued darkening, with albedo anomalies in 2100 averaged over the whole ice sheet lower than in 2000 by 0.08, driven solely by a warming climate. Future darkening is likely underestimated because of known underestimates in projected melting and because the model albedo scheme does not currently include light-absorbing impurities and the effect of biological activity, which themselves have a positive feedback, leading to increased melting, grain growth and darkening.

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Abstract. Surface melting is a major component of the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) surface mass balance, affecting sea level rise through direct runoff and the modulation on ice dynamics and hydrological processes, supraglacially, englacially and subglacially. Passive microwave (PMW) brightness temperature observations are of paramount importance in studying the spatial and temporal evolution of surface melting in view of their long temporal coverage (1979–to date) and high temporal resolution (daily). However, a major limitation of PMW datasets has been the relatively coarse spatial resolution, being historically of the order of tens of kilometres. Here, we use a newly released passive microwave dataset (37 GHz, horizontal polarization) made available through the NASA MeASUREs program to study the spatiotemporal evolution of surface melting over the GrIS at an enhanced spatial resolution of 3.125 Km. We assess the outputs of different detection algorithms through data collected by Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) and the outputs of the MAR regional climate model. We found that surface melting is well captured using a dynamic algorithm based on the outputs of MEMLS model, capable to detect sporadic and persistent melting. Our results indicate that, during the reference period 1979–2019 (1988–2019), surface melting over the GrIS increased in terms of both duration, up to ~4.5 (2.9) days per decade, and extension, up to 6.9 % (3.6 %) of the GrIS surface extent per decade, according to the MEMLS algorithm. Furthermore, the melting season has started up to ~4 (2.5) days earlier and ended ~7 (3.9) days later per decade. We also explored the information content of the enhanced resolution dataset with respect to the one at 25 km and MAR outputs through a semi-variogram approach. We found that the enhanced product is more sensitive to local scale processes, hence confirming the potential interest of this new enhanced product for studying surface melting over Greenland at a higher spatial resolution than the historical products and monitor its impact on sea level rise. This offers the opportunity to improve our understanding of the processes driving melting, to validate modelled melt extent at high resolution and potentially to assimilate this data in climate models.