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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ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:8bca7388cb5c4dd2a60b59f68ce7581d 2023-05-15T14:03:10+02:00 Subglacial topography and ice flux along the English Coast of Palmer Land, Antarctic Peninsula K. Winter E. A. Hill G. H. Gudmundsson J. Woodward 2020-12-01T00:00:00Z https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-3453-2020 https://doaj.org/article/8bca7388cb5c4dd2a60b59f68ce7581d EN eng Copernicus Publications https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/12/3453/2020/essd-12-3453-2020.pdf https://doaj.org/toc/1866-3508 https://doaj.org/toc/1866-3516 doi:10.5194/essd-12-3453-2020 1866-3508 1866-3516 https://doaj.org/article/8bca7388cb5c4dd2a60b59f68ce7581d Earth System Science Data, Vol 12, Pp 3453-3467 (2020) Environmental sciences GE1-350 Geology QE1-996.5 article 2020 ftdoajarticles https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-3453-2020 2022-12-31T04:48:45Z 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 3000 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 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 (Mouginot et al., 2019a), these outlets are found to discharge over 39.25 ± 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-stabilization in a future retreating scenario, with several ice stream beds dipping inland at ∼ 5 ∘ km −1 . 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 and sea level change estimates. RES data described in this paper are available through the UK Polar Data Centre: https://doi.org/10.5285/E07D62BF-D58C-4187-A019-59BE998939CC (Corr and Robinson, 2020). Article in Journal/Newspaper Antarc* Antarctic Antarctic Peninsula Antarctica Bellingshausen Sea Ice Shelves Palmer Land Southern Ocean Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles Antarctic Southern Ocean Antarctic Peninsula Bellingshausen Sea Palmer Land ENVELOPE(-65.000,-65.000,-71.500,-71.500) Earth System Science Data 12 4 3453 3467 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles |
op_collection_id |
ftdoajarticles |
language |
English |
topic |
Environmental sciences GE1-350 Geology QE1-996.5 |
spellingShingle |
Environmental sciences GE1-350 Geology QE1-996.5 K. Winter E. A. Hill G. H. Gudmundsson J. Woodward Subglacial topography and ice flux along the English Coast of Palmer Land, Antarctic Peninsula |
topic_facet |
Environmental sciences GE1-350 Geology QE1-996.5 |
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 3000 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 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 (Mouginot et al., 2019a), these outlets are found to discharge over 39.25 ± 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-stabilization in a future retreating scenario, with several ice stream beds dipping inland at ∼ 5 ∘ km −1 . 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 and sea level change estimates. RES data described in this paper are available through the UK Polar Data Centre: https://doi.org/10.5285/E07D62BF-D58C-4187-A019-59BE998939CC (Corr and Robinson, 2020). |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
K. Winter E. A. Hill G. H. Gudmundsson J. Woodward |
author_facet |
K. Winter E. A. Hill G. H. Gudmundsson J. Woodward |
author_sort |
K. Winter |
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 |
publisher |
Copernicus Publications |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-3453-2020 https://doaj.org/article/8bca7388cb5c4dd2a60b59f68ce7581d |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-65.000,-65.000,-71.500,-71.500) |
geographic |
Antarctic Southern Ocean Antarctic Peninsula Bellingshausen Sea Palmer Land |
geographic_facet |
Antarctic Southern Ocean Antarctic Peninsula Bellingshausen Sea Palmer Land |
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 |
Earth System Science Data, Vol 12, Pp 3453-3467 (2020) |
op_relation |
https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/12/3453/2020/essd-12-3453-2020.pdf https://doaj.org/toc/1866-3508 https://doaj.org/toc/1866-3516 doi:10.5194/essd-12-3453-2020 1866-3508 1866-3516 https://doaj.org/article/8bca7388cb5c4dd2a60b59f68ce7581d |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-3453-2020 |
container_title |
Earth System Science Data |
container_volume |
12 |
container_issue |
4 |
container_start_page |
3453 |
op_container_end_page |
3467 |
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1766273725740613632 |