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  1. Home
  2. Essential Climate Variables
  3. Ice Sheets and Ice Shelves

 

Ice Sheets and Ice Shelves

The understanding of the timescale of ice sheet response to climate change has changed dramatically over the last decade. Rapid changes in ice-sheet mass have surely contributed to abrupt changes in climate and sea level in the past.

  Domain: Terrestrial
  Subdomain: Cyrosphere
  Scientific Area: Snow and Ice
  ECV Steward: Hiroyuki Enomoto
  Products:  Surface Elevation Change; Ice Velocity; Ice Mass Change; Grounding Line Location and Thickness

 


Greenland Ice Sheet

Until 2007, rate of decrease in ice sheet height in cm per year.

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cambios_en_la_capa_de_hielo_de_…; Work of the United States Federal Government under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code.

 

 

 


ECV Products and Requirements

These products and requirements reflect the Implementation Plan 2022 (GCOS-244).

The requirements are found in the complete 2022 ECVs Requirements document as well: ECV Ice Sheets and Ice Shelves.

 
Products   Surface Elevation Change     Ice Velocity     Ice Volume Change     Grounding Line Location and Thickness
  (*) Unit Values   Unit Values   Unit Values   Unit Values
Horizontal Resolution G m     m 50   km     m 100
B     100        
T 100   1000   50   1000
Vertical Resolution G   -     -           -
B -   -       -
T -   -       -
Temporal Resolution G month 1   month 1   d 30   y  
B              
T 12   12   365   1
Timeliness G                      
B              
T              
Required Measurement Uncertainty (2-sigma) G m a-1     m y-1 10   km3 y-1     m 1
B     30        
T 0.1   100   10   10
Stability G m a-1     m s-1     km3 y-1     m  
B              
T 0.01   10   1   1

 

(*) Goal (G): an ideal requirement above which further improvements are not necessary. Breakthrough (B): an intermediate level between threshold and goal which, if achieved, would result in a significant improvement for the targeted application. The breakthrough value may also indicate the level at which specified uses within climate monitoring become possible. It may be appropriate to have different breakthrough values for different uses. Threshold (T): the minimum requirement to be met to ensure that data are useful.

 


Data Sources

This list provides sources for openly accessible data sets with worldwide coverage for which metadata is available. It is curated by the respective GCOS ECV Steward(s). The list does not claim to be complete. Anyone with a suitable dataset who wishes it to be added to this list should contact the GCOS Secretariat.

 

  • PARCA: Program for Regional Climate Assessment

https://nsidc.org/data/parca/data.html

  • Radarsat Antarctic Mapping Project Digital Elevation Model, Version 2

http://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0082 

  • MEaSUREs Annual Antarctic Ice Velocity Maps, 2005-2017, Version 1

http://nsidc.org/data/NSIDC-0720/versions/1 

  • MEaSUREs Greenland Ice Mapping Project (GIMP) Digital Elevation Model from GeoEye and WorldView Imagery, Version 1

http://nsidc.org/data/NSIDC-0715/versions/1 

  • Global Land Ice Velocity Extraction from Landsat 8 (GoLIVE)

https://nsidc.org/data/golive/ 

  • US International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition (US ITASE) Glaciochemical Data Version 2 ¨

https://nsidc.org/data/nsidc-0273 

  • Satellite ECV Inventory by the CEOS/CGMS Working Group on Climate (WGClimate)

http://climatemonitoring.info/ecvinventory 

  • TanDEM-X 90m DEM

https://tandemx-90m.dlr.de

  • ALOS/PRISM 30m DEM (AW3D30)

http://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/ALOS/en/aw3d30/data/index.htm

  • Global DEM 2m 

https://www.pgc.umn.edu/data/rema/

EU Copernicus

 

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