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4DGreenland

The high Arctic has experienced a large warming in the last two decades. The Greenland ice sheet is currently undergoing rapid changes in response to the increased temperatures, which have led to a steady increase in melting processes. One effect of the increasing melt is the increased advance of meltwater to the base of the ice sheet, so that the ice can slide over the bedrock more easily. A pan-Greenland quantification of the hydrological budget does not yet exist.

The ESA project 4DGreenland aims to advance the understanding of the Greenland Ice Sheet’s surface, supra and sub-glacial hydrology and its evolution and interactions.

The project addresses the following specific objectives:

• Creating and consolidating an unprecedented dataset composed of ice-sheet wide hydrology products, Earth Observation datasets, and state of the art ice-sheet and hydrology models
• Developing techniques and algorithms to detect surface and basal melting from satellite observations in conjunction with numerical modelling
• Applying these new techniques at local sites and across the Greenland ice sheet to monitor water dynamics and derive new hydrology datasets
• Performing an integrative scientific assessment of the hydrology of the Greenland Ice Sheet and its role in shaping current changes affecting the ice sheet

To achieve these objectives, the consortium will make use of a plethora of Earth Observation missions such as CryoSat2, Sentinel1&2, ArcticDEM, GRACE, GRACE-FO, ICESat-2, TanDEM-X and Landsat, in conjunction with numerical models of ice sheet.

The consortium of the 4DGreenland project consists of 9 different partners. DLR provides TanDEM-X data to measure elevation changes of remote ice sheets and to validate hydrologic products in high geometric resolution.

Project duration:

2020 – 2022

Project partner:

Technical University of Denmark (DTU, Prime), GEUS, Lancaster University (LU), Environmental Earth Observation IT GmbH (ENVEO), Finish Meterological Institute (FMI), German Aerospace Center (DLR), Earthwave, Sciences [&] Technology Corporation (S&T) und Shepherd Space ltd.