The extreme melt across the Greenland ice sheet in 2012

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dc.contributor.authorNghiem, S. V.
dc.contributor.authorHall, D. K.
dc.contributor.authorMote, T. L.
dc.contributor.authorTedesco, M.
dc.contributor.authorAlbert, M. R.
dc.contributor.authorKeegan, K.
dc.contributor.authorShuman, Christopher
dc.contributor.authorDiGirolamo, N. E.
dc.contributor.authorNeumann, G.
dc.date.accessioned2022-02-16T15:59:09Z
dc.date.available2022-02-16T15:59:09Z
dc.date.issued2012-10-27
dc.description.abstractThe discovery of the 2012 extreme melt event across almost the entire surface of the Greenland ice sheet is presented. Data from three different satellite sensors – including the Oceansat-2 scatterometer, the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, and the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder – are combined to obtain composite melt maps, representing the most complete melt conditions detectable across the ice sheet. Satellite observations reveal that melt occurred at or near the surface of the Greenland ice sheet across 98.6% of its entire extent on 12 July 2012, including the usually cold polar areas at high altitudes like Summit in the dry snow facies of the ice sheet. This melt event coincided with an anomalous ridge of warm air that became stagnant over Greenland. As seen in melt occurrences from multiple ice core records at Summit reported in the published literature, such a melt event is rare with the last significant one occurring in 1889 and the next previous one around seven centuries earlier in the Medieval Warm Period. Given its rarity, the 2012 extreme melt across Greenland provides an exceptional opportunity for new studies in broad interdisciplinary geophysical research.en_US
dc.description.sponsorshipThe research carried out at the Jet PropulsionLaboratory, California Institute of Technology, and at NASA Goddard SpaceFlight Center (GSFC) was supported by the National Aeronautics and SpaceAdministration (NASA) Cryospheric Sciences Program. We would like toacknowledge the support of the NASA Headquaters Science Innovation Fund(SIF), which helped to fund ongoing work at GSFC to blend the melt mapsfrom the three different instruments. The work at the City College of NewYork was supported by the NASA Cryospheric Program and the National Sci-ence Foundation grant ARC 0909388. Field observations of the melt at Sum-mit and NEEM were carried out under support from the National ScienceFoundation grant IGERT-0801490 to Dartmouth College. Near-surface airtemperature data in July 2012 are courtesy of Thomas Mefford (NOAA EarthSystem Research Laboratory Boulder, Colorado and Cooperative Institutefor Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado at Boulder)with additional processing by Michael J. Schnaubelt (University of Mary-land, Baltimore County, Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology andDepartment of Physics, Baltimore, Maryland). The Editor thanks Edward Hanna for his assistance in evaluatingthis paper.en_US
dc.description.urihttps://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012GL053611en_US
dc.format.extent6 pagesen_US
dc.genrejournal articlesen_US
dc.identifierdoi:10.13016/m2phpv-yjhe
dc.identifier.citationNghiem, S. V., Hall, D. K., Mote, T. L., Tedesco, M., Albert, M. R., Keegan, K., Shuman, C. A., DiGirolamo, N. E., and Neumann, G. (2012), The extreme melt across the Greenland ice sheet in 2012, Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L20502, doi:10.1029/2012GL053611.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.1029/2012GL053611
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11603/24282
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.publisherAGUen_US
dc.relation.isAvailableAtThe University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)
dc.relation.ispartofUMBC Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology
dc.relation.ispartofUMBC Faculty Collection
dc.rightsThis work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.en_US
dc.rightsPublic Domain Mark 1.0*
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/*
dc.titleThe extreme melt across the Greenland ice sheet in 2012en_US
dc.typeTexten_US
dcterms.creatorhttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-9606-767Xen_US

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