Ice_Sheets_CCI: Essential Climate Variables for the Greenland Ice Sheet
Forsberg, Rene¹; Sorensen, Louise¹; Levinsen, Joanna¹; Dall, Jorgen¹; Kusk, Anders¹; Evensberget, Dag²; Kamstra, Martejn²; Andersen, Signe³; Hvidberg, Christine⁴; Khvorostovsky, Kirill⁵; Nagler, Thomas⁶; Nagler, Thomas⁶; Scharrer, Kilian⁶; Shephard, Andy⁷; Ticconi, Francesca^7
1DTU-Space, DENMARK; ²S&T Norway, NORWAY; ³GEUS, DENMARK; ⁴Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, DENMARK; ⁵Nansen Centre for Environmental Research, NORWAY; ⁶ENVEO, AUSTRIA; ⁷University of Leeds, UNITED KINGDOM

As part of the ESA Climate Change Initiative (www.esa-cci.org) a long-term project ''ice_sheets_cci'' started 2012, joining 11 existing and 2 new projects already generating Essential Climate Variables (ECV's) for the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). The ''ice_sheets_cci'' goal is to generate a consistent, long-term and timely set of key climate parameters for the Greenland ice sheet, to maximize the impact of European satellite data on climate research, from missions such as ERS, Envisat and the future Sentinel satellites. The climate parameters to be provided, at first in a research context, are grids of Greenland ice sheet elevation changes from radar altimetry at 5 km resolution, ice velocity from repeat-pass SAR data at 500 m resolution on coastal outlet glaciers and the margins of the Greenland ice sheet, as well as time series of marine-terminating glacier calving front locations and grounding lines for floating-front glaciers. In the paper the first prototype results of the ''ice_sheets_cci'' project are presented, including Greenland-wide elevation change results, and ice velocities and calving front locations for selected parts of the coast-near ice sheet regions. The talk will also outline the results of the ''Round Robin'' experiments, where more than 20 science groups participated in method and data intercomparisons in common regions of the Greenland ice sheet.