TY - JOUR

T1 - Inferring Mass Loss by Measuring Contemporaneous Deformation around the Helheim Glacier, Southeastern Greenland, Using Sentinel-1 InSAR

AU - Erfani Jazi, Zohreh

AU - Motagh, Mahdi

AU - Klemann, Volker

N1 - Funding Information: The research of VK contributes to Advanced Earth System Modeling Capacity—ESM (Helmholtz-Association).

PY - 2022/8/15

Y1 - 2022/8/15

N2 - The elastic response of solid earth to glacier and ice sheet melting, the most important consequences of climate change, is a contemporaneous uplift. Here, we use interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) measurements to detect crustal deformation and mass loss near the Helheim glacier, one of the largest glaciers in southeastern Greenland. The InSAR time series of Sentinel-1 data between April 2016 and July 2020 suggest that there is a maximum cumulative displacement of ~6 cm in the line of sight (LOS) direction from the satellite to the ground near Helheim. We use an exponentially decreasing model of the thinning rate, which assumes that the mass loss starts at the lower-elevation terminal region of the glacier and continues to the higher-elevation interior. A linear inversion of the derived crustal uplift in the vicinity of bedrock using this model for surface loading in an elastic half-space suggests a mass loss of 8.33 Gt/year, which agrees with the results from other studies.

AB - The elastic response of solid earth to glacier and ice sheet melting, the most important consequences of climate change, is a contemporaneous uplift. Here, we use interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) measurements to detect crustal deformation and mass loss near the Helheim glacier, one of the largest glaciers in southeastern Greenland. The InSAR time series of Sentinel-1 data between April 2016 and July 2020 suggest that there is a maximum cumulative displacement of ~6 cm in the line of sight (LOS) direction from the satellite to the ground near Helheim. We use an exponentially decreasing model of the thinning rate, which assumes that the mass loss starts at the lower-elevation terminal region of the glacier and continues to the higher-elevation interior. A linear inversion of the derived crustal uplift in the vicinity of bedrock using this model for surface loading in an elastic half-space suggests a mass loss of 8.33 Gt/year, which agrees with the results from other studies.

KW - Helheim glacier

KW - InSAR

KW - isostatic rebound

KW - mass loss

KW - Sentinel-1A

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85137824633&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.3390/rs14163956

DO - 10.3390/rs14163956

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85137824633

VL - 14

JO - Remote sensing

JF - Remote sensing

SN - 2072-4292

IS - 16

M1 - 3956

ER -