Greenland’s rising air temperatures drive ice loss at surface and beyond

A new NASA study confirms that the surface temperature of Greenland’s massive ice sheet has been rising, stoked by warming air temperatures, and fueling loss of the island’s ice at the surface and throughout the mass beneath.

…”The relationship between surface temperature and mass loss lends further credence to earlier work showing rapid response of the ice sheet to surface meltwater,” said Dorothy Hall, a senior researcher in Cryospheric Sciences at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Md., and lead author of the study.

The paired surface temperature and gravity data confirm a strong connection between melting on ice sheet surfaces in areas below 6,500 feet in elevation, and ice loss throughout the ice sheet’s giant mass. The result led Hall’s team to conclude that the start of surface melting triggers mass loss of ice over large areas of the ice sheet.

The beginning of mass loss is highly sensitive to even minor amounts of surface melt. Hall and her colleagues showed that when less than two percent of the lower reaches of the ice sheet begins to melt at the surface, mass loss of ice can result. For example, in 2004 and 2005, the GRACE satellites recorded the onset of rapid subsurface ice loss less than 15 days after surface melting was captured by the Terra satellite.

“We’re seeing a close correspondence between the date that surface melting begins, and the date that mass loss of ice begins beneath the surface,” Hall said. “This indicates that the meltwater from the surface must be traveling down to the base of the ice sheet — through over a mile of ice — very rapidly, where its presence allows the ice at the base to slide forward, speeding the flow of outlet glaciers that discharge icebergs and water into the surrounding ocean.”

EurekAlert