MAGICS

Monitoring Arctic Glaciers and IceCaps from Space

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'Sea level change is one of the major challenges for the next century. Historically, ice loss from mountain glaciers and ice caps has been the single largest contributor to the ~2 mm/yr sea level rise over the last century and 50% of this contribution has come from the Arctic. Recent studies show that they will continue to be one of the major contributors to sea level rise in the 21st century. There is, however, a large uncertainty associated with these estimates. Direct observations are sparse and some areas, such as the Russian Arctic, have been not surveyed at all. This project aims to combine GRACE gravimetry observations, ICESat and Cryosat-2 altimetry measurements, surface mass balance information from models and glacier discharge estimates in a joint statistical assimilation. The combination of these data will provide consistent, robust and adequately constrained time series of the mass budget of the Arctic region in the first decennia of the 21st century, at a quality which cannot be obtained from the individual data sets. It will yield a model-independent glacial isostatic adjustment solution and a rigorous treatment of uncertainties. This will greatly improve our insights of the response of Arctic glaciers to climate changes, their contribution to sea level rise and serve as a validation tool for the development of glacier components which are poorly represented in globally coupled climate models. During the first 2 years of the project, the applicant will be hosted by John Wahr at CIRES in Boulder, Co. The final year of the project will be spend at the Bristol Glaciology Center with Jonathan Bamber. Their unique experience with remote sensing of the cryosphere and the extensive knowledge of glaciology and other geophysical processes at the institutes and the background of the applicant guarantee a successful project, which will establish him as a matured, well rounded researcher and leave him with a strong network and excellent career opportunities.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

The ice contained in the Arctic mountain glaciers and ice caps is reacting atypically fast to changes in the climate. As such, these regions, together with the two massive ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, are the biggest potential sources of sea-level rise and of particular interest to EU-funded scientists.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

Field observations from mountain glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets are scarce. This paucity of data puts severe limitations on our understanding of their behaviour and presents great open challenges for estimating and predicting their current and future contribution to sea level rise using numerical models. To overcome these limitations, an alternative approach is being explored within the EU-funded project MAGICS (Monitoring Arctic glaciers and icecaps from space).

Researchers aim to combine data from several sources to improve our knowledge of the Earth's ice-covered regions. The study is based on an extensive collection of ground measurements and data from the latest European Space Agency (ESA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) satellites, and climate models.

Scientists developed new methods for the processing of data from CryoSat-2, the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat), and Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) missions. The software prepared for MAGICS estimates surface changes with higher accuracy than existing algorithms and has led to the identification of sudden and rapid ice loss in a previously stable region of the Antarctic ice sheet.

Previous estimates, based solely on field measurements and few localised observations, sometimes overestimated ice loss when the findings were extrapolated over large regions. Owing to the developed algorithms for the MAGICS project, researchers were able to precisely constrain changes in all of the world's land ice.

Researchers found that all glaciers lost ice mass during the last decade, with the biggest losses observed in Arctic Canada, Alaska, Greenland, the southern Andes and the Himalayas. In addition, 1 % of land ice contributed more to sea-level rise than the massive Antarctic ice sheet.

Anthropogenic global warming, as well as multi-year fluctuations in the atmosphere and ocean currents, may be the source of the observed ice loss. The findings so far have been presented in international conferences and described in peer-reviewed publications in renowned journals such as Science and Nature Geoscience.

The MAGICS project suggests that there may be enough satellite data to detect mass loss of glaciers and ice sheets as a whole with some level of confidence. On the other hand, scientists underscore the need for continuous monitoring of the ice sheets to better predict future melting and the corresponding sea-level rise.