Unraveling the contributions of atmospheric rivers on Antarctica crustal deformation and its spatiotemporal distribution during the past decade

• Published in: Geophysical Journal International
• Main Authors: Li, Jingming, Li, Wenhao, Shum, C K, Li, Fei, Zhang, Shengkai, Lei, Jintao
• Other Authors: National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Key Research and Development Program of China
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford University Press (OUP) 2023
• Subjects: Geochemistry and Petrology; Geophysics; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggad306; https://academic.oup.com/gji/advance-article-pdf/doi/10.1093/gji/ggad306/51013630/ggad306.pdf; https://academic.oup.com/gji/article-pdf/235/2/1325/51075038/ggad306.pdf

SUMMARY Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are efficient mechanisms for transporting atmospheric moisture from low latitudes to the Antarctic continent. AR events induce intense snowfall episodes, which increase crustal deformation. Here, we used an AR detection algorithm, via a spatial matrix operation to quantify the contribution of AR-induced snowfall in the Antarctic continent, 2010–2019. Our results reveal that the AR snowfall contribution to Antarctica primarily ranged from 9.28 to 29.73 per cent from 2010 to 2019, and there was an evident increasing trend from 2015 to 2019 (20.66 per cent in 2015 to 29.30 per cent in 2019). AR-induced snowfall is one of the factors influencing the surface deformation of the Antarctic continent, based on the hourly AR snowfall deformation calculations for the Antarctic continent, both the average and maximum crustal deformation or displacement tends to be greatest near the coastline, while the displacement is less affected by AR further inland.