Description: We use satellite and airborne altimetry to estimate annual mass changes of the Greenland Ice Sheet. We estimate ice loss corresponding to a sea-level rise of 6.9 ± 0.4 mm from April 2011 to April 2020, with a highest annual ice loss rate of 1.4 mm/yr sea-level equivalent from April 2019 to April 2020. On a regional scale, our annual mass loss timeseries reveals 10–15 m/yr dynamic thickening at the terminus of Jakobshavn Isbræ from April 2016 to April 2018, followed by a return to dynamic thinning. We observe contrasting patterns of mass loss acceleration in different basins across the ice sheet and suggest that these spatiotemporal trends could be useful for calibrating and validating prognostic ice sheet models. In addition to resolving the spatial and temporal fingerprint of Greenland's recent ice loss, these mass loss grids are key for partitioning contemporary elastic vertical land motion from longer-term glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) trends at GPS stations around the ice sheet. Our ice-loss product results in a significantly different GIA interpretation from a previous ice-loss product.

Description: The accelerated ice flow of ice streams that reach far into the interior of the ice sheets is associated with lubrication of the ice sheet base by basal meltwater. However, the amount of basal melting under the large ice streams – such as the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream (NEGIS) – is largely unknown. In situ measurements of basal melt rates are important from various perspectives as they indicate the heat budget, the hydrological regime and the relative importance of sliding in glacier motion. The few previous estimates of basal melt rates in the NEGIS region were 0.1 m/a and more, based on radiostratigraphy methods. These findings raised the question of the heat source, since even an increased geothermal heat flux could not deliver the necessary amount of heat. Here, we present basal melt rates at the recent deep drill site EastGRIP, located in the centre of NEGIS. Within 2 subsequent years, we found basal melt rates of 0.19±0.04 m/a that are based on analysis of repeated phase-sensitive radar measurements. In order to quantify the contribution of processes that contribute to melting, we carried out an assessment of the energy balance at the interface and found the subglacial water system to play a key role in facilitating such high melt rates.

Description: Basal melt of ice shelves is a key factor governing discharge of ice from the Antarctic Ice Sheet as a result of its effects on buttressing. Here, we use radio echo sounding to determine the spatial variability of the basal melt rate of the southern Filchner Ice Shelf, Antarctica, along the inflow of Support Force Glacier. We find moderate melt rates with a maximum of 1.13 m/a about 50 km downstream of the grounding line. The variability of the melt rates over distances of a few kilometres is low (all but one 〈0.15 m/a at 2 km distance), indicating that measurements on coarse observational grids are able to yield a representative melt rate distribution. A comparison with remote-sensing-based melt rates revealed that, for the study area, large differences were due to inaccuracies in the estimation of vertical strain rates from remote sensing velocity fields. These inaccuracies can be overcome by using modern velocity fields.

Description: Full-Stokes (FS) ice sheet models provide the most sophisticated formulation of ice sheet flow. However, their applicability is often limited due to the high computational demand and numerical challenges. To balance computational demand and accuracy, the so-called Blatter–Pattyn (BP) stress regime is frequently used. Here, we explore the dynamic consequences of using simplified approaches by solving FS and the BP stress regime applied to the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream. To ensure a consistent comparison, we use one single ice sheet model to run the simulations under identical numerical conditions. A sensitivity study to the horizontal grid resolution (from 12.8 to a resolution of 0.1 km) reveals that velocity differences between the FS and BP solution emerge below ∼ 1 km horizontal resolution and continuously increase with resolution. Over the majority of the modelling domain both models reveal similar surface velocity patterns. At the grounding line of the 79∘ North Glacier the simulations show considerable differences whereby the BP model overestimates ice discharge of up to 50 % compared to FS. A sensitivity study to the friction type reveals that differences are stronger for a power-law friction than a linear friction law. Model differences are attributed to topographic variability and the basal drag, in which neglected stress terms in BP become important.

Description: Ice crystals are mechanically and dielectrically anisotropic. They progressively align under cumulative deformation, forming an ice-crystal-orientation fabric that, in turn, impacts ice deformation. However, almost all the observations of ice fabric are from ice core analysis, and its influence on the ice flow is unclear. Here, we present a non-linear inverse approach to process co- and cross-polarized phase-sensitive radar data. We estimate the continuous depth profile of georeferenced ice fabric orientation along with the reflection ratio and horizontal anisotropy of the ice column. Our method approximates the complete second-order orientation tensor and all the ice fabric eigenvalues. As a result, we infer the vertical ice fabric anisotropy, which is an essential factor to better understand ice deformation using anisotropic ice flow models. The approach is validated at two Antarctic ice core sites (EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica) Dome C and EPICA Dronning Maud Land) in contrasting flow regimes. Spatial variability in ice fabric characteristics in the dome-to-flank transition near Dome C is quantified with 20 more sites located along with a 36 km long cross-section. Local horizontal anisotropy increases under the dome summit and decreases away from the dome summit. We suggest that this is a consequence of the non-linear rheology of ice, also known as the Raymond effect. On larger spatial scales, horizontal anisotropy increases with increasing distance from the dome. At most of the sites, the main driver of ice fabric evolution is vertical compression, yet our data show that the horizontal distribution of the ice fabric is consistent with the present horizontal flow. This method uses polarimetric-radar data, which are suitable for profiling radar applications and are able to constrain ice fabric distribution on a spatial scale comparable to ice flow observations and models.

Description: Accurately modelling the contribution of Greenland and Antarctica to sea level rise requires solving partial differential equations at a high spatial resolution. In this paper, we discuss the scaling of the Ice-sheet and Sea-level System Model (ISSM) applied to the Greenland Ice Sheet with horizontal grid resolutions varying between 10 and 0.25 km. The model setup used as benchmark problem comprises a variety of modules with different levels of complexity and computational demands. The core builds the so-called stress balance module, which uses the higher-order approximation (or Blatter–Pattyn) of the Stokes equations, including free surface and ice-front evolution as well as thermodynamics in form of an enthalpy balance, and a mesh of linear prismatic finite elements, to compute the ice flow. We develop a detailed user-oriented, yet low-overhead, performance instrumentation tailored to the requirements of Earth system models and run scaling tests up to 6144 Message Passing Interface (MPI) processes. The results show that the computation of the Greenland model scales overall well up to 3072 MPI processes but is eventually slowed down by matrix assembly, the output handling and lower-dimensional problems that employ lower numbers of unknowns per MPI process. We also discuss improvements of the scaling and identify further improvements needed for climate research. The instrumented version of ISSM thus not only identifies potential performance bottlenecks that were not present at lower core counts but also provides the capability to continually monitor the performance of ISSM code basis. This is of long-term significance as the overall performance of ISSM model depends on the subtle interplay between algorithms, their implementation, underlying libraries, compilers, run-time systems and hardware characteristics, all of which are in a constant state of flux. We believe that future large-scale high-performance computing (HPC) systems will continue to employ the MPI-based programming paradigm on the road to exascale. Our scaling study pertains to a particular modelling setup available within ISSM and does not address accelerator techniques such as the use of vector units or GPUs. However, with 6144 MPI processes, we identified issues that need to be addressed in order to improve the ability of the ISSM code base to take advantage of upcoming systems that will require scaling to even higher numbers of MPI processes.

Description: Integrative and Comprehensive Understanding on Polar Environments (iCUPE) project developed 24 novel datasets utilizing in-situ observational capacities within the Arctic or remote sensing observations from ground or from space. The datasets covered atmospheric, cryospheric, marine, and terrestrial domains. This paper connects the iCUPE datasets to United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and showcases the use of selected datasets as knowledge provision services for policy- and decision-making actions. Inclusion of indigenous and societal knowledge into the data processing pipelines enables a feedback mechanism that facilitates data driven public services.

Description: Simulation approaches to firn densification often rely on the assumption that grain boundary sliding is the leading process driving the first stage of densification. Alley (1987) first developed a process-based material model of firn that describes this process. However, often so-called semi-empirical models are favored over the physical description of grain boundary sliding owing to their simplicity and the uncertainties regarding model parameters. In this study, we assessed the applicability of the grain boundary sliding model of Alley (1987) to firn using a numeric firn densification model and an optimization approach, for which we formulated variants of the constitutive relation of Alley (1987). An efficient model implementation based on an updated Lagrangian numerical scheme enabled us to perform a large number of simulations to test different model parameters and identify the simulation results that best reproduced 159 firn density profiles from Greenland and Antarctica. For most of the investigated locations, the simulated and measured firn density profiles were in good agreement. This result implies that the constitutive relation of Alley (1987) characterizes the first stage of firn densification well when suitable model parameters are used. An analysis of the parameters that result in the best agreement revealed a dependence on the mean surface mass balance. This finding may indicate that the load is insufficiently described, as the lateral components of the stress tensor are usually neglected in one-dimensional models of the firn column.

Description: We present a novel method to estimate dynamic ice loss of Greenland's three largest outlet glaciers: Jakobshavn Isbræ, Kangerlussuaq Glacier, and Helheim Glacier. We use Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) stations attached to bedrock to measure elastic displacements of the solid Earth caused by dynamic thinning near the glacier terminus. When we compare our results with discharge, we find a time lag between glacier speedup/slowdown and onset of dynamic thinning/thickening. Our results show that dynamic thinning/thickening on Jakobshavn Isbræ occurs 0.87 ± 0.07 years before speedup/slowdown. This implies that using GNSS time series we are able to predict speedup/slowdown of Jakobshavn Isbræ by up to 10.4 months. For Kangerlussuaq Glacier the lag between thinning/thickening and speedup/slowdown is 0.37 ± 0.17 years (4.4 months). Our methodology and results could be important for studies that attempt to model and understand mechanisms controlling short-term dynamic fluctuations of outlet glaciers in Greenland.

Description: Anisotropic crystal fabrics in ice sheets develop as a consequence of deformation and hence record information of past ice flow. Simultaneously, the fabric affects the present-day bulk mechanical properties of glacier ice because the susceptibility of ice crystals to deformation is highly anisotropic. This is particularly relevant in dynamic areas such as fast-flowing glaciers and ice streams, where the formation of strong fabrics might play a critical role in facilitating ice flow. Anisotropy is ignored in most state-of-the-art ice sheet models, and while its importance has long been recognized, accounting for fabric evolution and its impact on the ice viscosity has only recently become feasible. Both the application of such models to ice streams and their verification through in-situ observations are still rare. Ice cores provide direct and detailed information on the crystal fabric, but the logistical cost, technical challenges, particularly in fast-flowing ice and shear margins, difficulty in reconstructing the absolute orientation of the core, and their limitation of being a point measurement, make ice cores impractical for a spatially extensive evaluation of the fabric type. Indirect geophysical methods applied from or above the ice surface create the link between the small scale of laboratory experiments and ice–core observations to the large-scale coverage required for ice flow models and the complete understanding of ice stream dynamics. Here, we present a comprehensive analysis of the distribution of the ice fabric in the upstream part of the North-East Greenland Ice Stream (NEGIS). Our results are based on a combination of methods applied to extensive airborne and ground-based radar surveys, ice- and firn-core observations, and numerical ice-flow modelling. They show that in the onset region of NEGIS and around the EGRIP ice core drilling site, the fabric is horizontally strongly anisotropic, forming a horizontal girdle perpendicular to the ice flow, while the horizontal anisotropy reduces quickly over distances of less than five ice thicknesses outside of the ice stream’s shear margins. Downstream of the drill site, the fabric develops into a more vertically symmetric configuration on a time scale of around 2 ka, the first observation of this kind. Our study shows how ice-core based fabric observations, geophysical surveys and ice-flow modelling complement each other to obtain a more comprehensive picture of the spatially strongly varying fabric.