Geodetic measurements of vertical crustal velocity in West Antarctica and the implications for ice mass balance

We present preliminary geodetic estimates for vertical bedrock velocity at twelve survey GPS stations in the West Antarctic GPS Network, an additional survey station in the northern Antarctic Peninsula, and eleven continuous GPS stations distributed across the continent. The spatial pattern of these...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems
Main Authors: Bevis, M., Kendrick, E., Smalley, R., Dalziel, I., Caccamise, D., Sasgen, I., Helsen, M., Taylor, F., Zhou, H., Brown, A., Raleigh, D., Willis, M., Wilson, T., Konfal, S.
Other Authors: 1.3 Earth System Modelling, 1.0 Geodesy and Remote Sensing, Departments, GFZ Publication Database, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: 2009
Subjects:
Online Access:https://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_239527
Description
Summary:We present preliminary geodetic estimates for vertical bedrock velocity at twelve survey GPS stations in the West Antarctic GPS Network, an additional survey station in the northern Antarctic Peninsula, and eleven continuous GPS stations distributed across the continent. The spatial pattern of these velocities is not consistent with any postglacial rebound (PGR) model known to us. Four leading PGR models appear to be overpredicting uplift rates in the Transantarctic Mountains and West Antarctica and underpredicting them in the peninsula north of 65!. This discrepancy cannot be explained in terms of an elastic response to modern ice loss (except, perhaps, in part of the peninsula). Therefore, our initial geodetic results suggest that most GRACE ice mass rate estimates, which are critically dependent on a PGR correction, are systematically biased and are overpredicting ice loss for the continent as a whole.