Snow accumulation across Ekströmisen and Ritscherflya

• Main Author: Oerter, Hans
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2003
• Subjects: Amundsenisen; Ekströmisen; Heimefrontfjella; Kottasberge; Neumayer; Neumayer Station; Ritscherflya; Strømmebakken; The Gate; Antarc*; Antarctica; Ice Shelf; Polarforschung
• Online Access: https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/6106/; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.16656

Snow accumulation is an important glaciological parameter for various kinds of studies in Antarctica. A traverse route runs from Neumayer station (70° 38.6S, 8° 15.5W) at the coast across Ekströmisen and Ritscherflya towards Kottasberge, Heimefrontfjella (Kottas camp 74° 12.3S, 9° 44.8W). This 410 km long route was marked in 1985/86 for the first time by bamboo stakes with a spacing of 500 m as route markers. From the beginning the stakes were used for accumulation studies as well. The stake line was re-established in the 1996/97 season starting at a waypoint in 9 km distance from the Neumayer station. Since then it was read and maintained each year. Only with the availability of GPS it was possible to locate the stakes precisely enough to correlate unambiguously the readings of two successive years. The accumulation profile shows great variability depending on surface topography and wind field. There are also considerable yearly variations. Near surface density (0-1 m depth) values obtained from snow pit studies allow to convert the stake readings to accumulation values in water equivalent units.The traverse route was subdivided into 9 sections. Section 1 represents the ice shelf area from the starting point (9 km distance to Neumayer station) to waypoint 70 km, section 2 the remaining ice shelf area to the grounding line, section 3 the first 48 km of the ascend to Ritscherflya. Sections 4, 5 and 6 are the next 45, 55, and 45 km, respectively. Section 7 represents the remaining 94 km towards Kottas camp, in front of Kottasberge. Section 8 runs from Kottas camp to Strømmebakken, the gate to cross Kottasberge. Section 9, finally, runs along Strømmebakken towards Amundsenisen. In total the stake line is 454 km long and in the 2001/02 season 911 stakes were used to calculate accumulation rates. The table shows the results for the 5years period 1997-2001: Distance along the 9 profile sections, the measured change in snow height related to a 1-year period and averaged for each section, the mean near surface density, ...