Greenland Ice Sheet Mass Changes from NASA GSFC GRACE Mascon Solutions with Banded Color Scale

  • Released Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
  • Updated Sunday, August 20th, 2023 at 10:01PM
  • ID: 3687
Luthcke, S.B., D.D. Rowlands, J.J. McCarthy, A. Arendt, T. Sabaka, J.P. Boy, F.G. Lemoine, "Recent Changes of the Earth's Land Ice from GRACE, " presented at 2009 Fall AGU, H13G-02 (693337), Dec. 14, 2009.

The mass changes of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) are computed from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) inter-satellite range-rate observations for the period April 5, 2003 - July 25, 2009. The mass of the GIS has been computed at 10-day intervals and 200km spatial resolution from a regional high-resolution mascon solution (Luthcke and others, 2008 and 2006). The animation shows the change in mass referenced from April 5, 2003. The spatial variation in surface mass is shown in centimeters equivalent height of water. The time variation of the GIS mass is shown in the x-y plot insert with units of Gigatons.

Corresponding author:
Scott B. Luthcke
NASA GSFC
Planetary Geodynamics Laboratory, Code 698
Scott.B.Luthcke@nasa.gov

This animation shows mass changes over Greenland with a colorbar, graph and clock overlay.

This animation shows mass changes over Greenland without the chart, colorbar or seasonal clock.

Overlay of the graph, clock and colorbar with an alpha channel.

A high resolution still image of ice sheet mass changes over Greenland on 10/05/2008.

A high resolution still image of ice sheet mass changes over Greenland on 10/05/2008.

A high resolution still image of ice sheet mass changes over Greenland on 07/15/2009.

A high resolution still image of ice sheet mass changes over Greenland on 07/15/2009.

Colorbar applied to the GRACE Mascon Solution

Colorbar applied to the GRACE Mascon Solution

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio The Blue Marble Next Generation data is courtesy of Reto Stockli (NASA/GSFC) and NASA's Earth Observatory.

Papers

This visualization is based on the following papers:
  • Luthcke, S.B., A.A. Arendt, D.D. Rowlands, J.J. McCarthy and C.F. Larsen. Recent glacier mass changes in the Gulf of Alaska region from GRACE mascon solutions. Journal of Glaciology, Vol. 54, No. 188, 2008.

    Luthcke, S.B., H.J. Zwally, W. Abdalati, D.D. Rowlands, R.D. Ray, R.S. Nerem, F.G. Lemoine, J.J. McCarthy and D.S. Chinn. Recent Greenland Ice Mass Loss by Drainage System from Satellite Gravity Observations. Science, 314, 1286, 2006. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1130776]

Missions

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Series

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Datasets used in this visualization

Terra and Aqua BMNG (A.K.A. Blue Marble: Next Generation) (Collected with the MODIS sensor)

Credit: The Blue Marble data is courtesy of Reto Stockli (NASA/GSFC).

Dataset can be found at: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/

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Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) Mascon Solution (Collected with the Star Camera sensor)
NASA

Dataset can be found at: http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/spacecraft/

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