How does a change in climate variability impact the Greenland ice sheet surface mass balance?

Zolles, Tobias; Born, Andreas

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-4831-2024

Articles | Volume 18, issue 10

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-4831-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-18-4831-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 10

Research article

|

29 Oct 2024

Research article |

| 29 Oct 2024

How does a change in climate variability impact the Greenland ice sheet surface mass balance?

Tobias Zolles and Andreas Born

Data sets

The ERA-Interim reanalysis: configuration and performance of the data assimilation system (https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/reanalysis-datasets/era-interim) S. M. Uppala et al. https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.828

ETOPO1 1 Arc-Minute Global Relief Model: Procedures, Data Sources and Analysis C. Amante and B. W. Eakins https://doi.org/10.7289/V5C8276M

Model code and software

Bergen Snow Simulator (BESSI) used until 2022 T. Zolles https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13824216

Short summary

The Greenland ice sheet largely depends on the climate state. The uncertainties associated with the year-to-year variability have only a marginal impact on our simulated surface mass budget; this increases our confidence in projections and reconstructions. Basing the simulations on proxies, e.g., temperature, results in overestimates of the surface mass balance, as climatologies lead to small amounts of snowfall every day. This can be reduced by including sub-monthly precipitation variability.