Antarctic Ice Mass Change Products from GRACE/GRACE-FO Using Tailored Sensitivity Kernels

Abstract

We derived gravimetric mass change products, i.e., gridded and basin-averaged mass changes, for the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) from time-variable gravity-field solutions acquired by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission and its successor GRACE-FO, covering more than 18 years. For this purpose, tailored sensitivity kernels (TSKs) were generated for the application in a regional integration approach. The TSKs were inferred in a formal optimization approach minimizing the sum of both propagated mission errors and leakage errors. We accounted for mission errors by means of an empirical error covariance model, while assumptions on signal variances of potential sources of leakage were used to minimize leakage errors. To identify the optimal parameters to be used in the TSK generation, we assessed a set of TSKs by quantifying signal leakage from the processing of synthetic data and by inferring the noise level of the derived basin products. The finally selected TSKs were used to calculate mass change products from GRACE/GRACE-FO Level-2 spherical harmonic solutions covering 2002-04 to 2020-07. These products were compared to external data sets from satellite altimetry and the input–output method. For the period under investigation, the mass balance of the AIS was quantified to be −90.9±43.5 Gt a−1, corresponding to a mean sea-level rise of 0.25±0.12 mm a−1.

Keywords

• Antarctic Ice Sheet
• mass change
• GRACE/GRACE-FO
• sensitivity kernels