An elevation change dataset in Greenland ice sheet from 2003 to 2020 using satellite altimetry data

Abstract

A decade-long pronounced increase in temperatures in the Arctic resulted in a global warming hotspot over the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS). Associated changes in the cryosphere were the consequence and led to a demand for monitoring glacier changes, which are one of the major parameters to analyze the responses of the GrIS to climate change. Long-term altimetry data (e.g. ICESat, CryoSat-2, and ICESat-2) can provide elevation changes over different periods, and many methods have been developed for altimetry alone to obtain elevation changes. In this work, we provided the long-term elevation change rate data of the GrIS in three different periods using ICESat data (from February 2003 to October 2009), Cryosat-2 data (from August 2010 to October 2018) and ICESat-2 data (from October 2018 to December 2020). Optimal methods were applied to the datasets collected by three different altimeters: crossover analysis for ICESat/ICESat-2 and the surface fit method for Cryosat-2. The data revealed that the elevation change rates of the GrIS were –12.19 ± 3.81 cm/yr, –19.70 ± 3.61 cm/yr and –23.39 ± 3.06 cm/yr in the three different periods, corresponding to volume change rates of –210.20 ± 25.34 km3/yr, –339.11 ± 24.01 km3/yr and –363.33 ± 20.37 km3/yr, respectively. In general, the obtained results agree with the trends discovered by other studies that were also derived from satellite altimetry data. This dataset provides the basic data for research into the impact of climate change over the GrIS. The dataset is available at https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.j00076.00121.

Keywords

• Greenland ice sheet
• elevation change
• volume change
• satellite altimetry