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Abstract The mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet at Dye 3 is estimated on the basis of observations of ice thickness, accumulation rate, surface velocities, and surface strain-rates. The calculations indicate a rate of increase of surface elevation of 3 cm/year, with 95% confidence limits of −3 cm/year and +9 cm/year. Previous estimates of the mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet by the same method reported large imbalances; these are most probably due to lack of precise data and the use of quantities measured at the surface as representative of depth-averaged quantities. The most reliable observations indicate that the interior regions of the Greenland ice sheet are at present thickening at a rate of a few centimetres per year; a contributing cause for this may be the slow thinning of a bottom layer of relatively soft Wisconsin ice.
Reeh et al. (1985) studied this question.