GEUS Bulletin editor in chief Catherine Jex congratulates the researchers saying: “The number of downloads achieved by this paper is super for a journal like GEUS Bulletin.” She adds that the visibility achieved by all the top papers sets a new high standard for the journal, which has undergone numerous upgrades.
One of the authors of the top ranking paper, Professor Jason Box from The Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) department of Glaciology and Climate and part of the PROMICE research team thinks the popularity stems from specific factors that support one another.
“The article was popular because for one: the changes to the bare ice area of Greenland is not widely reported but is where most melting happens. Another second factor is, this was the first study featuring Greenland-wide bare ice area results from a new EU satellite mission (Sentinel-3). A third factor is how the PROMICE network is reaching a level of maturity, now with 15 years of data, that we can make more definitive statements as to what is really happening to the ice”
As described in the abstract, the researchers used “105 PROMICE ice-melt time series to identify the timing of seasonal bare-ice onset preceded by snow cover conditions.” The result was applied to “snow-to-ice albedo transition value to measure the variations in daily Greenland bare-ice area in Sentinel-3 optical satellite imagery covering the extremely low and high respective melt years of 2018 and 2019.”