NASA GSFC MASCON Solution over Greenland from Jan 2004 - Jun 2014

  • Released Wednesday, August 26, 2015
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GRACE, NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, consists of twin co-orbiting satellites that fly in a near polar orbit separated by a distance of 220 km. GRACE precisely measures the distance between the two spacecraft in order to make detailed measurements of the Earth's gravitational field. Since its launch in 2002, GRACE has provided a continuous record of changes in the mass of the Earth's ice sheets.

This animations shows the change in the the Greenland Ice Sheet between January 2004 and June 2014. The 1-arc-deg NASA GSFC mascon solution data was resampled to a 998 x 1800 data array using Kriging interpolation. A color scale was applied in the range of +250 to -250 centimeters of equivalent water height, where blue values indicate an increase in the ice sheet mass while red shades indicate a decrease. In addition, the running sum total of the accumulated mass change over the Greenland Ice Sheet is shown on a graph overlay in gigatons.

Technical Note: The glacial isostatic adjustment signal (Earth mass redistribution in response to historical ice loading) has been removed using the ICE-6G model (Peltier et al. 2015).

A print-resolution image of the accumulated change in equivalent water height over the Greenland Ice Sheet from January 2004 through June 2014. A graph showing the total change in gigatons is overlaid on the image.

A print-resolution image of the accumulated change in equivalent water height over the Greenland Ice Sheet from January 2004 through June 2014. A graph showing the total change in gigatons is overlaid on the image.

The graph overlay of the mass change in gigatons with transparency along with all text labels, colorbar and date.

The graph overlay of the mass change in gigatons with transparency along with all text labels, colorbar and date.



Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

Release date

This page was originally published on Wednesday, August 26, 2015.
This page was last updated on Friday, August 2, 2024 at 4:28 PM EDT.


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Related papers

Luthcke, S.B., T.J. Sabaka, B.D. Loomis, A.A. Arendt, J.J. McCarthy, J. Camp (2013), Antarctica, Greenland and Gulf of Alaska land ice evolution from an iterated GRACE global mascon solution, J. Glac., Vol. 59, No. 216, 613-631, doi:10.3189/2013jJoG12j147.

Peltier, W.R., Argus, D.F. and Drummond, R. (2015) Space geodesy constrains ice-age terminal deglaciation: The global ICE-6G_C (VM5a) model. J. Geophys. Res. Solid Earth, 120, 450-487, doi:10.1002/2014JB011176.

Luthcke, S.B., T.J. Sabaka, B.D. Loomis, A.A. Arendt, J.J. McCarthy, J. Camp (2013), Antarctica, Greenland and Gulf of Alaska land ice evolution from an iterated GRACE global mascon solution, J. Glac., Vol. 59, No. 216, 613-631, doi:10.3189/2013jJoG12j147.

Peltier, W.R., Argus, D.F. and Drummond, R. (2015) Space geodesy constrains ice-age terminal deglaciation: The global ICE-6G_C (VM5a) model. J. Geophys. Res. Solid Earth, 120, 450-487, doi:10.1002/2014JB011176.


Datasets used

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