Subglacial lakes and hydrology across the Ellsworth Subglacial Highlands, West Antarctica

• Main Authors: Napoleoni, Felipe, Jamieson, Stewart S.R., Ross, Neil, Bentley, Michael J., Rivera, Andrés, Smith, Andrew M., Siegert, Martin J., Paxman, Guy J. G., Gacitúa, Guisella, Uribe, José A., Zamora, Rodrigo, Brisbourne, Alex M., Vaughan, David G.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: Ellsworth Subglacial Highlands; Pine Island Glacier; Rutford; Rutford Ice Stream; Thwaites Glacier; West Antarctica; Antarc*; Antarctica; Ice Sheet; Pine Island
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2020-68; https://tc.copernicus.org/preprints/tc-2020-68/

Subglacial water plays an important role in ice sheet dynamics and stability. It is often located at the onset of ice streams and has the potential to enhance ice flow downstream by lubricating the ice-bed interface. The most recent subglacial lake inventory of Antarctica mapped nearly 400 lakes, of which ~ 14 % are found in West Antarctica. Despite the potential importance of subglacial water for ice dynamics, there is a lack of detailed subglacial water characterization in West Antarctica. Using radio-echo sounding data, we analyse the ice-bed interface to detect subglacial lakes. We report 37 previously uncharted subglacial lakes and present a systematic analysis of their physical properties. This represents a ~ 60 % increase in subglacial lakes in the region. Additionally, a new digital elevation model of basal topography was built and used to create a detailed hydropotential model of Ellsworth Subglacial Highlands to simulate the subglacial hydrological network. This approach allows us to characterize basal hydrology, subglacial water catchments and connections between them. Furthermore, the simulated subglacial hydrological catchments of Rutford Ice Stream, Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier do not match precisely with their ice surface catchments.