Runoff and mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet: 1958–2003

Hanna, Edward; Huybrechts, Philippe; Janssens, I.; Cappelen, John; Steffen, Konrad; Stephens, Ag

doi:10.1029/2004jd005641

Cited by 234 publications

(275 citation statements)

References 34 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

248

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…To further illustrate the importance of monitoring short scale spatial and temporal variability, we compare our results with accumulation rates derived from an ERA-40 data-based meteorological model (Hanna et al, 2005). The model runs with meteorological data and thus does not depend on density measurements.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1). The estimates obtained are compared with snow accumulation rates derived from a weather prediction numerical model run retrospectively using data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) 45-year (1957-2002) reanalysis ERA-40 and ECMWF operational analysis from 2002 (Hanna et al, 2005(Hanna et al, , 2006(Hanna et al, and 2008. This model has been recently corrected and calibrated for Greenland with recent field measurements .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Spatially extensive estimates of annual accumulation in the dry snow zone of the Greenland Ice Sheet determined from radar altimetry

et al. 2010

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. We present estimates of accumulation rate along a 200 km transect ranging in elevation from 2750 to 3150 m in the dry snow zone on the western slope of the Greenland Ice Sheet. An airborne radar altimeter is used to estimate the thickness of annual internal layers and, in conjunction with ground based snow/firn density profiles, annual accumulation rates between 1998 and 2003 are derived. A clear gradient in the thickness of each layer observed by the radar altimeter and in the associated estimates of annual accumulation is seen along the transect, with a 33.6%± 16% mean decrease in accumulation from west to east. The observed inter-annual variability is high, with the annual mean accumulation rate estimated at 0.359 m.w.e. yr −1 (s.d. ± 0.049 m.w.e. yr −1 ). Mean accumulation rates modelled using meteorological models overestimate our results by 16% on average, but by 32% and 42% in the years 2001 and 2002. The methodology presented here demonstrates the potential to obtain accurate and spatially extensive accumulation rates from radar altimeters in regions of ice sheets where field observations are sparse, and accumulation rates greater than several tens of cm.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatially extensive estimates of annual accumulation in the dry snow zone of the Greenland Ice Sheet determined from radar altimetry

et al. 2010

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The PDDM was driven with precipitation and 2 m -air temperature fields. The latter was corrected for biases using empirically-derived lapse rates at a 0.5°by 0.5°resolution [Hanna et al, 2005]. The additional input required to drive the EBSM includes downward shortwave and longwave radiation, surface pressure, wind field and 2 m-atmospheric humidity.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[4] Each model was first tuned to produce annual runoff rates close to estimates by Hanna et al [2005]. To this end, they were forced with 6-hourly European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) reanalysis (ERA-40) data for the period 1991 -2000.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of model physics on estimating the surface mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet

Bougamont

Bamber

Ridley

et al. 2007

Geophysical Research Letters

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

[1] Long-term predictions of sea level rise from increased Greenland ice sheet melting have been derived using Positive Degree Day models only. It is, however, unknown precisely what uncertainties are associated with applying this simple surface melt parameterization for future climate. We compare the behavior of a Positive Degree Day and Energy Balance/Snowpack model for estimating the surface mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet under a warming climate. Both models were first tuned to give similar values for present-day mass balance using 10 years of ERA-40 climatology and were then run for 300 years, forced with the output of a GCM in which atmospheric CO 2 increased to 4 times preindustrial levels. Results indicate that the Positive Degree Day model is more sensitive to climate warming than the Energy Balance model, generating annual runoff rates almost twice as large for a fixed ice sheet geometry. Roughly half of this difference was due to differences in the volume of melt generated and half was due to differences in refreezing rates in the snowpack. Our results indicate that the modeled snowpack properties evolve on a multidecadal timescale to changing climate, with a potentially large impact on the mass balance of the ice sheet; an evolution that was absent from the Positive Degree Day model. Citation: Bougamont, M.,

show abstract

“…To prescribe boundary conditions for temperature and humidity, we used ERA-40 data (Uppala et al, 2005), since the ECMWF reanalysis data sets have been shown to be quite realistic in representing important climate variables for the Greenland region (Hanna and Valdes, 2001;Hanna et al, 2005). Monthly climatological fields (averaged from 1958 to 2001) of temperature and relative humidity from the 2.5 • ERA-40 grid were bi-linearly interpolated to the Cartesian 100 km grid used in REMBO.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

An efficient regional energy-moisture balance model for simulation of the Greenland Ice Sheet response to climate change

2010

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. In order to explore the response of the Greenland ice sheet (GIS) to climate change on long (centennial to multi-millennial) time scales, a regional energy-moisture balance model has been developed. This model simulates seasonal variations of temperature and precipitation over Greenland and explicitly accounts for elevation and albedo feedbacks. From these fields, the annual mean surface temperature and surface mass balance can be determined and used to force an ice sheet model. The melt component of the surface mass balance is computed here using both a positive degree day approach and a more physically-based alternative that includes insolation and albedo explicitly. As a validation of the climate model, we first simulated temperature and precipitation over Greenland for the prescribed, present-day topography. Our simulated climatology compares well to observations and does not differ significantly from that of a simple parameterization used in many previous simulations. Furthermore, the calculated surface mass balance using both melt schemes falls within the range of recent regional climate model results. For a prescribed, ice-free state, the differences in simulated climatology between the regional energy-moisture balance model and the simple parameterization become significant, with our model showing much stronger summer warming. When coupled to a threedimensional ice sheet model and initialized with present-day conditions, the two melt schemes both allow realistic simulations of the present-day GIS.

show abstract

Runoff and mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet: 1958–2003

Cited by 234 publications

References 34 publications

Spatially extensive estimates of annual accumulation in the dry snow zone of the Greenland Ice Sheet determined from radar altimetry

Spatially extensive estimates of annual accumulation in the dry snow zone of the Greenland Ice Sheet determined from radar altimetry

Impact of model physics on estimating the surface mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet

An efficient regional energy-moisture balance model for simulation of the Greenland Ice Sheet response to climate change

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About