Welcome to the arctic monitoring web-site. The Danish Arctic research institutions present updated knowledge on the condition of two major components of the Arctic: The Greenland Ice Sheet and the sea ice. The map illustrates how the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet gains and loses mass on a daily basis. This is known as the surface mass balance. It does not include the mass that is lost when glaciers calve off icebergs and melt as they come into contact with warm seawater.
By holding the mouse over the black circles, you can see the day’s weather observations from meteorological stations that are used to monitor the melting processes. By clicking on the magenta circle, measurements of runoff from Watson river close to Kangerlussuaq is shown. The river drains about 12000 km2 of the inland ice.
The graph below the map shows the total daily contribution from all points on the ice sheet.
The blue curve shows the current season’s surface mass balance measured in gigatonnes (1 Gt is 1 billion tonnes and corresponds to 1 cubic kilometre of water).
The dark grey curve traces the mean value from the period 1981-2010.
The light grey band shows differences from year to year. For any calendar day, the band shows the range over the 30 years (in the period 1981-2010), however with the lowest and highest values for each day omitted.
Read more (here)
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