Jason E. Box (Byrd Polar Research Center, Scott Hall, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, U.S.A.), Marco Tedesco (City University of New York, New York City, NY, U.S.A.), Xavier Fettweis (Department of Geography, University of Liege, Liege, Belgium), Dorothy K. Hall (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, U.S.A.), Konrad Steffen (Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) , Birmensdorf, Switzerland) and Julienne Christine Stroeve (National Snow and Ice Data Center, Boulder, CO, U.S.A.)
Abstract
Greenland ice sheet mass loss has accelerated responding to combined glacier discharge and surface melt water runoff increases. During summer, absorbed solar energy, modulated at the surface primarily by albedo, is the dominant factor governing surface melt variability in the ablation area. NASA MODIS data spanning 13 summers (2000–2012), indicate that mid-summer (July) ice sheet albedo declined by 0.064 from a value of 0.752 in the early 2000s. The ice sheet accordingly absorbed 100 EJ more solar energy for the month of July in 2012 than in the early 2000s. This additional energy flux during summer doubled melt rates in the ice sheet ablation area during the observation period.
Abnormally strong anticyclonic circulation, associated with a persistent summer North Atlantic Oscillation extreme 2007–2012, enabled 3 amplifying mechanisms to maximize the albedo feedback: (1) increased warm (south) air advection along the western ice sheet increased surface sensible heating that in turn enhanced snow grain metamorphic rates, further reducing albedo; (2) increased surface downward shortwave flux, leading to more surface heating and further albedo reduction; and (3) reduced snowfall rates sustained low albedo, maximizing surface solar heating, progressively lowering albedo over multiple years. The summer net infrared and solar radiation for the high elevation accumulation area reached positive values during this period, contributing to an abrupt melt area increase in 2012.
A number of factors make it reasonable to expect more melt episodes covering 100% of the ice sheet area in coming years: (1) the past 13 y of increasing surface air temperatures have eroded snowpack ‘cold content’, preconditioning the ice sheet for earlier melt onset, and less heat is required to bring the surface to melting. (2) Greenland temperatures, have lagged the N Hemisphere average in the 2000s, need to increase further for Greenland to be in phase with the N Hemisphere average. (3) Arctic amplification of enhanced greenhouse warming is driven by albedo feedback over sea ice, terrestrial environments, and through autumn-winter heat release from open water areas. Likely melt area increases is despite a second order negative feedback operating in the accumulation area identified statistically from more summer snowfall (brightening effect) in anomalously warm summers. Without this negative feedback, the accumulation area complete surface melting may have happened sooner than in 2012.
While it has been shown that the ice sheet dynamics can adjust rapidly to ice flow perturbations, a negative feedback responsivity, the mass imbalance of the ice sheet in the coming decades is likely to be increasingly negative because of the positive feedback from surface albedo with air temperature. Surface melting may therefore increasingly dominate ice sheet mass loss, as glaciers retreat from a marine termini and the area of low albedo expands over the gradually sloping ice sheet. The albedo feedback ensures an increasing solar energy absorption. What could shut the positive feedback down would be a combination of an anomalously cold winter and anomalously thick snowpack. This scenario is possible given the cooling effect of a major N Hemisphere volcanic eruption or some other event to reduce surface heating.
http://bprc.osu.edu/wiki/Greenland_Ice_Albedo_Monitoring
http://www.meltfactor.org/blog/?p=710
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