Mass-Change Acceleration in Antarctica from GRACE Monthly Gravity Field Solutions

In a warming climate, it is critical to accurately estimate ice-sheet mass balance to quantify its contribution to present-day sea-level rise. In this study temporal mass variations in Antarctica are investigated based on monthly GRACE gravity solutions. In order to diminish the effect of large uncertainties in glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) models, an approach is developed to estimate the acceleration of the ice-sheet mass, assuming the presence of accelerated melt signal in the GRACE data. Though the estimate of accelerated melt does not provide an absolute value for the volume of the melting ice, it is a viable tool for characterizing the present-day ice-sheet mass balance.