The elastic response of the Earth to interannual variations in Antarctic precipitation
Abstract. Measurements of elastic displacements of the bed-rock surrounding large ice sheets have been proposed as a means to detect mass changes in these ice sheets. However, ac-cumulation of glacial mass on the ice sheets is a noisy process, subject to large spatial and temporal variations in prec...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
1995
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.488.928 http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/FACULTY/conrad/papers/Conrad_GRL1995.pdf |
| Summary: | Abstract. Measurements of elastic displacements of the bed-rock surrounding large ice sheets have been proposed as a means to detect mass changes in these ice sheets. However, ac-cumulation of glacial mass on the ice sheets is a noisy process, subject to large spatial and temporal variations in precipita-tion. We simulated the response of the Antarctic continent o a stochastic model of interannual precipitation variations and found that interannual variations in the elastic response of the earth are large when compared to the long-term mean of dis-placements produced by an assumed average ice mass imbal-ance of 10%. If, as some scientists predict, Antarctic ice mass changes in the future become dramatic, the long-term signal should be large enough to be detected by a few years of geo-detic measurements, despite climatic noise. |
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