Ice flow in Greenland for the International Polar Year 2008–2009

If you are interested in our ice velocity map of Greenland, please contact Jeremie Mouginot or Bernd Scheuchl by e-mail. We are happy to provide the data set but ask that you reference the following paper.

Rignot, E. and J. Mouginot, Ice flow in Greenland for the International Polar Year 2008-2009, Geophys. Res. Lett. 39, L11501, doi:10.1029/2012GL051634

Check also our list of glacier names for Google Earth

Abstract

A digital representation of ice surface velocity is essential for a variety of glaciological, geologic and geophysical analyses and modeling. Here, we present a new, reference, comprehensive, high-resolution, digital mosaic of ice motion in Greenland assembled from satellite radar interferometry data acquired during the International Polar Year 2008 to 2009 by the Envisat Advanced Synthetic-Aperture Radar (ASAR), the Advanced Land Observation System (ALOS)’s Phase-Array L-band SAR (PALSAR) and the RADARSAT-1 SAR that covers 99% of the ice sheet in area. The best mapping performance is obtained using ALOS PALSAR data due to higher levels of temporal coherence at the L-band frequency, but C-band frequency SAR data are less affected by the ionosphere. The ice motion map reveals various flow regimes, ranging from patterned enhanced flow into a few large glaciers in the cold, low precipitation areas of north Greenland; to diffuse, enhanced flow into numerous, narrow, fast-moving glaciers in the warmer, high precipitation sectors of northwest and southeast Greenland. We find that the 100 fastest glaciers (> 800 m/yr) drain 66% of the ice sheet in the area, marine-terminating glaciers drain 88% of Greenland, and basal-sliding motion dominates internal deformation over more than 50% of the ice sheet. This view of ice sheet motion provides significant new constraints on ice flow modeling.

Figure. Ice velocity map of the Greenland Ice Sheet assembled from satellite radar interferometry data from ALOS PALSAR, Envisat ASAR and RADARSAT-1 overlaid on a MODIS mosaic with a logarithmic color scale ranging from brown (no motion) to green, light green, blue and red (fast motion) at 150 m pixel spacing. Black lines are major ice divides [Weidick, 1995]. Glacier and fjord names are discussed in the text. Fj. = Fjord (blue), Br. = Bræ, Gl. = Gletscher or Glacier, and Se. = Sermia. Ice cap names are red. Major regions are labeled as NO = North, NE = North East, CE = Center East, SE = South East, SW = South West, CW = Center West, NW = North West. Ice front and coastline positions are from a complete radar mosaic of the ice sheet from year 2009. The blocky structures near the divides in south Greenland are caused by ionospheric noise.

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