Using GRACE and climate model simulations to predict mass loss of Alaskan glaciers through 2100

Existing projections of Alaska's future sea-level contributions tend to be divergent and are not tied directly to regional observations. Here we develop a simple, regional observation-based projection of Alaska's future sea-level contribution.

We compute a time series of recent Alaska glacier mass variability using monthly GRACE gravity fields from August 2002 through December 2014. We also construct a three-parameter model of Alaska glacier mass variability based on monthly ERA-Interim snowfall and temperature fields. When these three model parameters are fitted to the GRACE time series, the model explains 94% of the variance of the GRACE data.