12 years of snow accumulation from ground-penetrating radar surveys on AP Olsen Ice Cap, northeast Greenland

Greenland’s peripheral glaciers and ice caps are particularly sensitive to a warming climate and often respond more rapidly to warming than the Greenland Ice Sheet. These smaller ice bodies also play a vital role in local ecosystems. End-of-winter distribution of snow cover is a key driver of glacier mass balance, but predicting snow accumulation in the complex glacier terrain is challenging due to the interplay of topography and wind that influences snowfall deposition and re-distribution. Accurate mass balance estimates must therefore rely on in-situ observations.

Here, we present a dataset of end-of-winter snow depths over A.P. Olsen Ice Cap (APO), northeast Greenland, derived from ground-penetrating radar (GPR) measurements over the period 2008-2024. Spanning a total profile length of 568 km collected over 12 survey years, this dataset combines a rare long-term time series of in-situ observations with extensive spatial coverage, offering exceptional insights into snow accumulation patterns. We use this dataset to i) assess the spatio-temporal distribution of snow accumulation over the 16-year period, and ii) evaluate the performance of a regional climate model, the Arctic reanalysis product CARRA, to simulate end-of-winter snow depths. Our findings provide insights into the utility of CARRA for filling spatial and temporal gaps in in-situ end-of-winter snow depth data, a key input parameter for surface mass balance models over A.P. Olsen Ice Cap and other peripheral glaciers.