The mass loss of the Greenland ice sheet has been the main contributor to global sea level rise in recent decades. Under the trend of global warming, the Greenland ice sheet is melting faster. It is of great scientific significance to explore the causes of mass loss and its response to climate change. Based on the MEaSUREs Greenland groundingline and the basin boundaries, we discretize the groundingline, combine the MEaSUREs annual ice velocity data from 1985 to 2015 with the BedMachine v3 ice thickness data, and vectorially calculate the ice discharge at each flux gate of the groundingline. We use the surface mass balance data of RACMO2.3p2 model to spatially calculate the surface mass balance of each basin, and combined it with the ice discharge results to obtain the Greenland ice sheet mass balance data set (1985-2015). The data set includes the mass balance results of each basin of the Greenland ice sheet in the year 1985, 2000 and 2015, and the annual ice velocity data, ice thickness and annual ice discharge corresponding to the location of each flux gate. The data set realizes the fine evaluation of ice flux at the groundingline, and reflect the changes and spatial distribution characteristics of the mass balance of each basin of the Greenland ice sheet in recent 30 years. It provides basic data for the subsequent fine change evaluation and prediction of the mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet and the exploration of the mechanism of ice sheet loss.

File naming and required software

File name:
The corresponding data and ice flux results of each flux outlet unit of the Greenland ice sheet are stored in CSV format, and the name of the file is "Table1_GrIS_Fluxgate_D.csv";
The summary results of ice discharge, surface mass balance and mass balance of each basin of the Greenland ice sheet are stored in Excel file format, and the file name is "Table2_GrIS_basin_MB. xlsx".
Data reading method:
All files in the dataset can be opened directly (such as Notepad and excel). If you want to display them with diagrams, you can use ArcGIS to extract XY coordinate data in table2 and generate corresponding vector point data.

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Cite as:

Lin, Y., Cheng, X. (2021). Greenland ice sheet mass balance data set (1985-2015). A Big Earth Data Platform for Three Poles, DOI: 10.11888/Cryos.tpdc.271831. CSTR: 18406.11.Cryos.tpdc.271831. (Download the reference： RIS | Bibtex )

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References literature

1.Mouginot, J., Rignot, E., Bjørk, A. A., Van den Broeke, M., Millan, R., Morlighem, M., ... & Wood, M. (2019). Forty-six years of Greenland Ice Sheet mass balance from 1972 to 2018. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences, 116(19), 9239-9244. (View Details )

2.Joughin, I., Smith, B. E., Howat, I. M., Scambos, T., & Moon, T. (2010). Greenland flow variability from ice-sheet-wide velocity mapping. Journal of Glaciology, 56(197), 415-430. (View Details )

3.Morlighem, M., Williams, C. N., Rignot, E., An, L., Arndt, J. E., Bamber, J. L., ... & Zinglersen, K. B. (2017). BedMachine v3: Complete bed topography and ocean bathymetry mapping of Greenland from multibeam echo sounding combined with mass conservation. Geophysical research letters, 44(21), 11-051. (View Details )

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License： This work is licensed under an Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)