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Abstract
Climate warming is altering the Greenland snow melting rates, duration, and spatial patterns. Here, we examine the summer (June, July and August) extreme (percentile 90th ) snow melting events for the 1959 to 2022 period. Spatial and temporal snow melting is linked with the atmospheric circulation patterns that rule the synoptic variability in Greenland. Different snow melting patterns are found depending on the Greenland sector. The largest extreme snow melting frequency and magnitude, as well as relative contribution to the accumulated snow melting per season is observed in northern Greenland. The average extreme snow melting during summer is significant increasing in the entire Greenland, which is consistent with the general increase of radiative and turbulent heat fluxes for the same temporal period. The largest and statistically significant (p-value < 0.05) increases are observed in North-West and North Greenland. The increase in extreme melting events is linked with the increase in the most anticyclonic weather types during the temporal period analyzed. Further, the slight non-statistically significant downward trend detected in extreme melting in SW is driven by the non-statistically significant decrease of CWT 14, which bring most 99th percentile snow melting events (49%) in this sector. Our results are important for a better understanding of extreme events in the arctic.