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The Greenland ice sheet is reacting to climate change. Yet, mass-budget estimates differ considerably, partly due to climatic variability and partly to uncertainties in the techniques of assessing mass change (IPCC 2007). Nevertheless, all recent estimates agree that the ice sheet is losing mass (e.g. 286 Gt/yr; Velicogna 2009) at an accelerating rate (Rignot et al. 2011). On top of this, the area with a negative mass budget is expanding rapidly (Khan et al. 2010). The mass loss is attributed equally to increases in both iceberg production and melting of the ice sheet (Van den Broeke et al. 2009).

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the PROMICE project team* Fig. 1. Map of Greenland showing the locations of the 21 PROMICE weather stations in eight regions. The blue colours show mean satellite (MODIS) derived albedo for the months of June, July and August for 2008-2012. The contour lines show elevations (m) of the ice-sheet surface.