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Accelerated ice flow near the equilibrium zone of west-central Greenland Ice Sheet has been attributed to an increase in infiltrated surface melt water as a response to climate warming. The assessment of surface melting events must be more than the detection of melt onset or extent. Retrieval of surface melt magnitude is necessary to improve understanding of ice sheet flow and surface melt coupling. An optical-thermal feature space partitioned as a function of melt intensity was derived using a one-dimensional thermal snowmelt model (SNTHERM) forced by hourly meteorological data from the Greenland Climate Network (GC-Net) at reference sites spanning dry, percolation, and wet snow facies in the Jakobshavn drainage basin. Melt intensities or liquid water fractions (LWF) were derived for satellite composite periods covering May, June, and July. This empirical retrieval scheme has been applied to the MODIS satellite archive spanning the period from 2000-2007. This retrieval has implications for improved assessment of ice sheet mass balance and captures changes in the vital link between atmosphere - ice sheet dynamics.
