Greenland Ice Sheet Daily Surface Melt Flux Observed From Space

Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) surface melt has contributed to the global sea-level rise and the ongoing warming is expected to promote this process. This study provides a new strategy for the quantitative estimate of GrIS daily surface melt at enhanced resolution (3.125 km) from a remote sensing perspective beyond traditional regional climate models (RCMs). Daily melt flux is estimated from spaceborne radiometer observations with a back-propagation neural network model. The network is trained with melt fluxes that are calculated using detailed in-situ atmospheric and snow observations and a surface energy balance model. Our results provide details about the extreme melt in mid-July 2012 when surface melt occurred at Summit and the meltwater volume exceeded 20 Gt as a result of anomalous warming. Meltwater volume from the satellite is very close to that from RCMs.