Impact of atmospheric river evolutions on Greenland ice sheet mass changes over the last two decades, 2000–2019

Abstract

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) serve as mechanisms that transport water vapor to the poles, triggering extreme weather events, altering weather patterns over Greenland, and even impacting mass changes in the Greenland ice sheet. In this study, we detected and extracted ARs spatiotemporal evolution characteristics over Greenland from the past two decades. And subsequently analyzed the Greenland mass changes. Our findings indicate that between 2000 and 2019, the annual occurrences of ARs varied from 13 to 27 times, with durations ranging from 156 to 610 h. Interestingly, the ARs exhibited distinct migration patterns across different periods, transitioning from a uniform distribution towards the west side of Greenland and eventually towards the east side. To delve deeper into the relationship between ARs and mass changes, we assessed the contribution of ARs to Greenland's surface mass balance using a five-year study period. The results show that the contribution of AR to SMB has a tendency to increase in stages, 20.5% from 2000 to 2004, 31.5% from 2005 to 2009, 46.4% from 2010 to 2014, and 48.2% from 2015 to 2019.