Mapping ice in Greenland with ERS

This animation of the Greenland results shows the boundaries (thick line) of the ice sheet and major ice divides (thin lines). The colours indicate ice sheet elevation change rate in centimetres per year (see colour scale). These values are derived from 11 years of ERS-1/ERS-2 satellite altimeter data, 1992–2003, excluding some ice-sheet marginal areas (white). The spatially averaged rate is +5.4 cm/year, or ~5 cm/year when corrected for bedrock uplift. The white areas between the colour-coded pixels and the thick line delimiting the ice sheet indicate no observations. Latitude in °N, longitude in °W.