Polar Portal

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Daily and accumulated surface mass budget and melt area is calculated using output from the DMI HARMONIE-AROME IGB model. This model is run daily for weather prediction purposes and the SMB model output is provided here purely for information purposes. While we do strive to provide data in near real-time, DMI takes no responsibility for any errors, gaps or other data deficiencies or any losses suffered as a result of these.

The surface mass balance model is described in Langen et al., 2017 Liquid Water Flow and Retention on the Greenland Ice Sheet in the Regional Climate Model HIRHAM5: Local and Large-Scale Impacts , Frontiers in Earth Science, 4  (https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/feart.2016.00110).

PLEASE NOTE: Surface mass balance is a model product augmented with observations. In an initial set-up ("assimilation") step, the HARMONIE-AROME model makes a short term forecast which is compared to meteorological observations and, if necessary, slightly corrected. This observation-enhanced model field is then used as a basis to run the dedicated surface mass balance model.

This implies that the real-time calculated surface mass balance depends on the underlying operational weather model. Operational models are routinely updated, and even though the results based on the different models resemble each other, they are not identical. As a consequence, time series of the calculated surface mass balances or the comparison of results from different years should be treated with some caution.
Note that the long-term climatology used in the polarportal plots (the average period from 1981-2010) are based on similar output from a different climate model, HIRHAM5 also run at DMI using the ERA-Interim reanalysis (Mottram et al., 2017 Surface mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet in the regional climate model HIRHAM5: Present state and future prospects, Journal of Low Temperature Science, 75, 105-115: https://eprints.lib.hokudai.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2115/65106/1/12_105-115.pdf). However, the  same SMB model is used to calculate melt and SMB for the background period so that the variables are comparable. Data from this constant version is also freely available to download (see: http://www.prudence.dmi.dk/data/temp/RUM/HIRHAM/Greenland/ERAI).

Please acknowledge DMI/Polar Portal if you use this data in published works. We recommend that you contact us before working with the data to avoid possible misinterpretation. Many more variables are available and we can supply further data for scientific purposes. Please contact info@polarportal.dk.

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Date      SMB(Gt/day)  SMBacc(Gt)
20240901      6.098         6.1
20240902      0.936         7.0
20240903      1.766         8.8
20240904      1.479        10.3
20240905      0.695        11.0
20240906      3.587        14.6
20240907      2.747        17.3
20240908      0.903        18.2
20240909      0.443        18.7
20240910      0.215        18.9
20240911      0.163        19.0
20240912     -0.155        18.9
20240913     -0.073        18.8
20240914     -0.220        18.6
20240915     -0.007        18.6