Balance velocities and measured properties of the Antarctic ice sheet from a new compilation of gridded data for modelling

• Main Authors: Huybrechts, Philippe, Steinhage, Daniel, Wilhelms, Frank, Bamber, J.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2000
• Subjects: Antarctic; Antarctic Peninsula; Dronning Maud Land; Filchner-Ronne-Schelfeis; The Antarctic; Annals of Glaciology; Antarc*; EPICA; Ice Sheet; Ice Shelves; Schelfeis*
• Online Access: https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/1479/; https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/1479/1/Huy9999b.pdf; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.12070; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.12070.d001

This paper presents a new compilation of gridded data sets for three-dimensional modeling of the Antarctic ice sheet. These are for surface elevation, icethickness, bedrock elevation and accumulation rate as interpolated on a 281 x 281 mesh with 20 km spacing, and encompass all of the ice sheet and thesurrounding continental shelf. Data sources include the Bamber digital elevation model from ERS-1 radar altimeter data, a redigitization of available ice thicknessdata, the Giovinetto accumulation data, recent ice-thickness data from British and German expeditions as well as accumulation data from German and Norwegianexpeditions. In particular, new data were incorporated for the Filchner-Ronne-Schelfeis and for Dronning Maud Land arising from the EPICA pre-site survey.Special attention was devoted to carefully match the various data sources, both among themselves as across the grounding line and below the ice shelves toenable ice-sheet expansion and retreat in dynamic situations. As an application, the balance flow is calculated over the entire ice sheet using a two-dimensionalfinite difference scheme and compared with a previous assessment. This brought to light the existence of ice-streaming features extending well inland of the icesheet. A detailed zoom over Dronning Maud Land exhibits the general flow characteristics of interest for locating a future deep-drilling site. As a by-product, anupdated value of 26.4 x 106 km3 was obtained for the total volume of the ice sheet and ice shelves, or equivalent to 61.1 m of global sea-level rise after removalof the ice sheet and subsequent oceanic invasion and isostatic rebound. The total accumulation over the grounded ice sheet, including the Antarctic Peninsula, is1924 Gta-1, or between 5 and 20% higher than earlier estimates. Including all of the ice shelves, the value is 2344 Gta-1.