Surface mass balance (SMB) and surface hydrology reflect the expression of climate variability on ice sheets and ice shelves, with important implications for sea level. In Antarctica and Greenland, increasing accumulation can lead to high surface albedo, reduced melt, and increased firn pore space, while increasing meltwater production, ponding, and runoff can drive both direct mass loss, reduce firn air content, increase ice shelf vulnerability, and influence ice dynamics. Morerover, SMB processes modulate the overall magnitude of ice sheet mass changes. This session seeks new insights into ice sheet and ice shelf SMB and hydrological processes and their impacts. We welcome remote sensing, modeling, field, and reconstruction-based studies of atmosphere-ice sheet surface interactions, including energy balance and albedo, snow accumulation and precipitation phase, firn evolution, meltwater production and runoff, supraglacial lake processes, extreme SMB and melt events, ice-ocean-atmosphere interactions, and impacts on ice shelf stability, hydrofracture, and sea level. 

• A - Atmospheric Sciences
• GC - Global Environmental Change
• H - Hydrology
• IN - Informatics