Polar maps of linear trends of water mass from GRACE geoid data analysis. Extreme negative values of ice mass decay reaching -150 mm of equivalent-water height per year, are clearly visible for Alaskan glaciers, South-East coast of Greenland in the Northern hemisphere and coast of West Antarctica.
Above image:
Time-series of water volume over Greenland detected by GRACE, at the spatial resolution of ~400 km (estimated from the last release of "stabilized" 10-day GRGS solutions). Besides obvious seasonal amplitudes damped versus time, the regular loss of the mass over this polar region has a linear rate of -128.68 km3 per year, due to actual ice melting. Vertical bars are from formal errors only. Correction of GIA and post-glacial rebound (PGR) effects are not included in this computation.
Among other things, GRACE will help us to study:
- Mass balance of the ice sheets
- Ice Sheet contribution to the sea level rise
- Snow pack changes
- Permafrost
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Reference: Ramillien G., Lombard A., A. Cazenave, Ivins E. R., Llubes M., Remy F. and Biancale R., Interannual variations of the mass balance of the Antarctica and Greenland ice sheets from GRACE, Global & Planetary
Change, 53, 198-208, 2006.