Surface elevation, hydrostatic ice thickness and basal mass balance of the Roi Baudouin Ice Shelf, East Antarctica, link to GeoTIFFs ...

• Main Authors: Berger, Sophie, Drews, Reinhard, Helm, Veit, Sun, Sainan, Pattyn, Frank
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA 2017
• Subjects: File content; File name; File format; File size; Uniform resource locator/link to file; Satellite remote sensing; Antarc*; Antarctica; Dronning Maud Land; East Antarctica; Ice Shelf; Ice Shelves
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.1594/pangaea.883285; https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.883285

Ice shelves control the dynamic mass loss of ice sheets through buttressing and their integrity depends on the spatial variability of their basal mass balance (BMB) i.e., the difference between refreezing and melting. Here, we present an improved technique - based on satellite observations - to capture the small-scale variability in the BMB of ice shelves. As a case study, we apply the methodology to the Roi Baudouin Ice Shelf, Dronning Maud Land, East Antarctica, and derive its yearly averaged BMB at 10 m horizontal gridding. We use mass conservation in a Lagrangian framework based on high-resolution surface velocities, atmospheric-model surface mass balance and hydrostatic ice-thickness fields (derived from TanDEM-X surface elevation). Spatial derivatives are implemented using the total-variation differentiation, which preserves abrupt changes in flowvelocities and their spatial gradients. Such changes may reflect a dynamic response to localized basal melting and should be included in the mass budget. Our ... : 3 rasters data are provided :- the Lagrangian basal mass balance (BMB) is given in (ice-equivalent) m/a and is computed with the methodology described in Berger et al (2017, doi:10.5194/tc-11-2675-2017).- the surface elevation is given in meters relative to the Ellipsoid WGS84 and comes from SAR interferometry on TanDEM-X satellite data of 2013. The elevation data have been filtered using a Gaussian filter with a standard deviation of 7 pixels (see Berger et al, 2017, doi:10.5194/tc-11-2675-2017).- the thickness is given in ice-equivalent meters and is computed by assuming hydrostatic equilibrium with densities of 1027 kg/m³, 910 kg/m³ and 2 kg/m³ for seawater, ice and firn air, respectively. The firn air correction used here comes from Lenaerts et al (2017, doi:10.1038/nclimate3180). ...