Deliverable 3.2: Roadmap for an Optimal Sensor Network for Monitoring EAVs for Land Ice

The Arctic is undergoing rapid changes due to climate warming, with significant impacts on land ice, including glaciers and ice caps. The Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) has lost about twice as much mass as the Antarctic Ice Sheet between 2003 and 2019. Glaciers and Ice Caps (GICs) in the Arctic, i.e., Alaska, the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, Iceland, Svalbard, Russian Arctic, and peripheral GICs in Greenland were responsible for approximately 71% of the global GIC mass loss during the same period. Due to these processes, Arctic land ice loss is currently a major contributor to global sea level rise, which has profound and long-lasting impacts on the Earth system, e.g. the local but also global ocean circulation, and world-wide coastal communities. Monitoring Arctic land ice is therefore critical for understanding sea-level rise, freshwater input to the ocean, and regional climate feedback. 

Arctic PASSION will address the urgent need for coordinated and accessible Earth observation and information services for the Arctic region and to co-create a coherent, integrated pan-Arctic Observing System of Systems (pan-AOSS). At the University of Bristol, we focus on Arctic land ice and created this roadmap to outline a comprehensive, integrated strategy for Arctic land-ice-related EAV/SAVs monitoring, leveraging satellite remote sensing, in-situ measurements, and reanalysis products within the broader Arctic Observing System (AOS). 

The objectives of this roadmap are to provide a better monitoring network and strategy for quantifying EAVs for Arctic land ice - specifically changes in Arctic land ice mass and volume, determining contributions to global sea-level rise, monitoring seasonal and interannual variabilities in ice dynamics, improving model predictions of future land-ice change, and eventually supporting climate services, policy, and adaptation planning. This roadmap is built upon the work conducted within the AP project, focusing on Arctic marine-terminating glaciers monitoring, which has led to two peer-reviewed publications in Earth System Science Data (Li et al., 2024) and Nature Communications (Li et al., 2025).