Neural Operators Reveal Scale-Dependent Limits on Recovering Greenland Ice Loss from Sea Level Fingerprints
Abstract
Sea level fingerprints connect the spatial distribution of rapid ice mass change to sea surface height (SSH) change, but the spatial resolving power of this inverse problem remains poorly quantified. Here we provide the first systematic, scale-resolved quantification of Greenland Ice Sheet mass change structure recoverable from its SSH fingerprint when ice loss geometry varies. We develop a physics-informed neural operator, constrained by an accurate neural-operator emulator of the forward sea level equation, to probe the information content of this ill-conditioned inverse problem. Across synthetic ice change ensembles, broad ice loss patterns can be recovered, but distinct ice fields can produce nearly identical fingerprints, so fine-scale structure depends on the assumed a-priori ice change distribution. Inversion fidelity varies with the wavelength and amplitude of ice mass change. An empirical error law separates these effects and defines a scale-dependent accuracy ceiling. For a satellite-altimetry-derived reference field, the estimated fingerprint-only ceiling is R2∼0.79 under the present SSH observation geometry and matched-prior assumption. The leading three principal components explain 99.76% of fingerprint variance, yet higher-order components retain information needed to distinguish finer ice change structure. SSH observations near Greenland carry most information on ice loss locations. Applying the leading fingerprint principal components to the observed 1993--2019 SSH rate recovers the large-scale Greenland fingerprint, while the residual field is correlated with basin-scale bathymetry, consistent with unresolved sterodynamic variability. These results establish a quantitative empirical bound on fingerprint-only ice-loss resolving power and identify how independent observations and ice sheet constraints can improve inference.
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BibTeX
@misc{bao2026neural,
title = {{Neural Operators Reveal Scale-Dependent Limits on Recovering Greenland Ice Loss from Sea Level Fingerprints}},
author = {Xiyuan Bao and Sophie Coulson and Natasha Valencic and S. Mostafa Mousavi and Sönke Dangendorf and Andrew Jason Lloyd and Jerry X. Mitrovica},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.23748},
eprint = {2610.23748},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.23748},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Neural Operators Reveal Scale-Dependent Limits on Recovering Greenland Ice Loss from Sea Level Fingerprints
AU - Xiyuan Bao
AU - Sophie Coulson
AU - Natasha Valencic
AU - S. Mostafa Mousavi
AU - Sönke Dangendorf
AU - Andrew Jason Lloyd
AU - Jerry X. Mitrovica
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/16
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.23748
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.23748
AB - Sea level fingerprints connect the spatial distribution of rapid ice mass change to sea surface height (SSH) change, but the spatial resolving power of this inverse problem remains poorly quantified. Here we provide the first systematic, scale-resolved quantification of Greenland Ice Sheet mass change structure recoverable from its SSH fingerprint when ice loss geometry varies. We develop a physics-informed neural operator, constrained by an accurate neural-operator emulator of the forward sea level equation, to probe the information content of this ill-conditioned inverse problem. Across synthetic ice change ensembles, broad ice loss patterns can be recovered, but distinct ice fields can produce nearly identical fingerprints, so fine-scale structure depends on the assumed a-priori ice change distribution. Inversion fidelity varies with the wavelength and amplitude of ice mass change. An empirical error law separates these effects and defines a scale-dependent accuracy ceiling. For a satellite-altimetry-derived reference field, the estimated fingerprint-only ceiling is R^2∼0.79 under the present SSH observation geometry and matched-prior assumption. The leading three principal components explain 99.76% of fingerprint variance, yet higher-order components retain information needed to distinguish finer ice change structure. SSH observations near Greenland carry most information on ice loss locations. Applying the leading fingerprint principal components to the observed 1993--2019 SSH rate recovers the large-scale Greenland fingerprint, while the residual field is correlated with basin-scale bathymetry, consistent with unresolved sterodynamic variability. These results establish a quantitative empirical bound on fingerprint-only ice-loss resolving power and identify how independent observations and ice sheet constraints can improve inference.
ER -