Subglacial topography and ice flux along the English Coast of Palmer Land, Antarctic Peninsula
Recent satellite data have revealed widespread grounding line retreat, glacier thinning, and associated mass loss along the Bellingshausen Sea sector, leading to increased concern for the stability of this region of Antarctica. While satellites have greatly improved our understanding of surface cond...
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ftcopernicus:oai:publications.copernicus.org:essdd86825 2023-05-15T13:31:38+02:00 Subglacial topography and ice flux along the English Coast of Palmer Land, Antarctic Peninsula Winter, Kate Hill, Emily A. Gudmundsson, G. Hilmar Woodward, John 2020-07-28 application/pdf https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2020-181 https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2020-181/ eng eng doi:10.5194/essd-2020-181 https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2020-181/ eISSN: 1866-3516 Text 2020 ftcopernicus https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2020-181 2020-08-03T16:22:01Z Recent satellite data have revealed widespread grounding line retreat, glacier thinning, and associated mass loss along the Bellingshausen Sea sector, leading to increased concern for the stability of this region of Antarctica. While satellites have greatly improved our understanding of surface conditions, a lack of radio-echo sounding (RES) data in this region has restricted our analysis of subglacial topography, ice thickness and ice flux. In this paper we analyse 3,000 km of 150 MHz airborne RES data collected using the PASIN2 radar system (flown at 3–5 km line spacing) to investigate the subglacial controls on ice flow near to the grounding lines of Ers, Envisat, Cryosat, Grace, Sentinel, Lidke and Landsat ice streams as well as Hall and Nikitin glaciers. We find that each outlet is topographically controlled, and when ice thickness is combined with surface velocity data from MEaSUREs (Mouiginot et al., 2019), these outlets are found to discharge over 39.2 ± 0.79 Gt a −1 of ice to floating ice shelves and the Southern Ocean. Our RES measurements reveal that outlet flows are grounded more than 300 m below sea level, and that there is limited topographic support for inland grounding line re-stabilisation in a future retreating scenario, with several ice stream beds dipping inland at ~ 5 degrees per km. These data reinforce the importance of accurate bed topography to model and understand the controls on inland ice flow and grounding line position as well as overall mass balance / sea level change estimates. RES data described in this paper are available through the UK Polar Data Center: https://doi.org/10.5285/E07D62BF-D58C-4187-A019-59BE998939CC (Corr and Robinson, 2020). Text Antarc* Antarctic Antarctic Peninsula Antarctica Bellingshausen Sea Ice Shelves Palmer Land Southern Ocean Copernicus Publications: E-Journals Antarctic Antarctic Peninsula Bellingshausen Sea Palmer Land ENVELOPE(-65.000,-65.000,-71.500,-71.500) Southern Ocean |
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Open Polar |
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Copernicus Publications: E-Journals |
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ftcopernicus |
language |
English |
description |
Recent satellite data have revealed widespread grounding line retreat, glacier thinning, and associated mass loss along the Bellingshausen Sea sector, leading to increased concern for the stability of this region of Antarctica. While satellites have greatly improved our understanding of surface conditions, a lack of radio-echo sounding (RES) data in this region has restricted our analysis of subglacial topography, ice thickness and ice flux. In this paper we analyse 3,000 km of 150 MHz airborne RES data collected using the PASIN2 radar system (flown at 3–5 km line spacing) to investigate the subglacial controls on ice flow near to the grounding lines of Ers, Envisat, Cryosat, Grace, Sentinel, Lidke and Landsat ice streams as well as Hall and Nikitin glaciers. We find that each outlet is topographically controlled, and when ice thickness is combined with surface velocity data from MEaSUREs (Mouiginot et al., 2019), these outlets are found to discharge over 39.2 ± 0.79 Gt a −1 of ice to floating ice shelves and the Southern Ocean. Our RES measurements reveal that outlet flows are grounded more than 300 m below sea level, and that there is limited topographic support for inland grounding line re-stabilisation in a future retreating scenario, with several ice stream beds dipping inland at ~ 5 degrees per km. These data reinforce the importance of accurate bed topography to model and understand the controls on inland ice flow and grounding line position as well as overall mass balance / sea level change estimates. RES data described in this paper are available through the UK Polar Data Center: https://doi.org/10.5285/E07D62BF-D58C-4187-A019-59BE998939CC (Corr and Robinson, 2020). |
format |
Text |
author |
Winter, Kate Hill, Emily A. Gudmundsson, G. Hilmar Woodward, John |
spellingShingle |
Winter, Kate Hill, Emily A. Gudmundsson, G. Hilmar Woodward, John Subglacial topography and ice flux along the English Coast of Palmer Land, Antarctic Peninsula |
author_facet |
Winter, Kate Hill, Emily A. Gudmundsson, G. Hilmar Woodward, John |
author_sort |
Winter, Kate |
title |
Subglacial topography and ice flux along the English Coast of Palmer Land, Antarctic Peninsula |
title_short |
Subglacial topography and ice flux along the English Coast of Palmer Land, Antarctic Peninsula |
title_full |
Subglacial topography and ice flux along the English Coast of Palmer Land, Antarctic Peninsula |
title_fullStr |
Subglacial topography and ice flux along the English Coast of Palmer Land, Antarctic Peninsula |
title_full_unstemmed |
Subglacial topography and ice flux along the English Coast of Palmer Land, Antarctic Peninsula |
title_sort |
subglacial topography and ice flux along the english coast of palmer land, antarctic peninsula |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2020-181 https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2020-181/ |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-65.000,-65.000,-71.500,-71.500) |
geographic |
Antarctic Antarctic Peninsula Bellingshausen Sea Palmer Land Southern Ocean |
geographic_facet |
Antarctic Antarctic Peninsula Bellingshausen Sea Palmer Land Southern Ocean |
genre |
Antarc* Antarctic Antarctic Peninsula Antarctica Bellingshausen Sea Ice Shelves Palmer Land Southern Ocean |
genre_facet |
Antarc* Antarctic Antarctic Peninsula Antarctica Bellingshausen Sea Ice Shelves Palmer Land Southern Ocean |
op_source |
eISSN: 1866-3516 |
op_relation |
doi:10.5194/essd-2020-181 https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2020-181/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2020-181 |
_version_ |
1766019643428831232 |