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CRYOSPHERE

Record Greenland mass loss

Nature Climate Change volume 10, pages 803–804 (2020)Cite this article

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Gravity-based estimates of mass change have been extended by the recently launched GRACE Follow-On Satellites. The satellite record, combined with regional climate models, reveals that the Greenland Ice Sheet had lower mass loss in 2017–2018, only to return to a record-breaking mass loss in the summer of 2019.

The GRACE-FO satellites provide mass change measurements on spatiotemporal scales equivalent to those of the GRACE mission (monthly global estimates with a spatial resolution of about 300 km) with improved instrument and flight systems2. Owing to early technical challenges in the GRACE-FO mission, the new satellites had to rely on only one accelerometer, rather than two, to correct for non-gravitational effects such as atmospheric drag, similar to what happened near the end of the GRACE mission. The 11-month gap between the two missions made the problem even more challenging. Such data gaps can make monitoring and tracking polar regions difficult, especially when the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are changing so rapidly. Showing continuity in the record is therefore important, and one way to do that is to use independent sources of data before, during and after the gap to assess the GRACE/GRACE-FO record.

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Fig. 1: Mass balance trend of the Greenland Ice Sheet from April 2002 to December 2019 as measured by the GRACE/GRACE-FO satellites.

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  1. Department of Earth System Science, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

    Yara Mohajerani

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  1. Yara Mohajerani
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Correspondence to Yara Mohajerani.

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The author declares no competing interests.

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Mohajerani, Y. Record Greenland mass loss. Nat. Clim. Chang. 10, 803–804 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0887-9

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