Global Representation of Trends and Variability in Ice and Water Mass Recovered by GRACE (IMAGE)

University of Texas at Austin

Global Representation of Trends and Variability in Ice and Water Mass Recovered by GRACE

Caption

Global representation of trends and variability in ice and water mass recovered by GRACE over 15 years. The top figure, which shows trend maps over Antarctica, Greenland and part of the Arctic, represent changes in ice mass. The middle trend map mainly represents changes in the terrestrial water storage, as well as large trends related to continental rebound after glacier ice-melts over continental areas, such as Alaska, Patagonia and the Canadian Arctic. The trends of the terrestrial water storage are partially related floods and droughts, but also reflect, for example, long term changes in groundwater depletion by human activity. The bottom figure shows variability in the ocean bottom pressure and are particularly relevant for understanding these effects in in the difficult to observed southern oceans and the Arctic Ocean. For the first two, the red represents mass loss and blue represents mass gain. In last figure, the color scales represent variability, with the highest variability shown in red.

Credit

Cockrell School Of Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin

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