Surface mass balance of Pine Island Glacier, West Antarctica over the period 2005-2014, derived from airborne radar soundings and neutron probe measurements

• Main Authors: Kowalewski, Stefan, Helm, Veit, Morris, Elizabeth Mary, Eisen, Olaf
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA 2021
• Subjects: Airborne Radar; ASIRAS; Pine Island Glacier; SMB; surface mass balance; Antarc*; Antarctica; Pine Island; The Cryosphere; West Antarctica
• Online Access: https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.927004; https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.927004

Airborne radar soundings of internal reflection layers were collected across the Pine Island (PIG) catchment area, West Antarctica, aboard the Polar 5 aircraft between 01 and 03 Dec 2014. An isochronal reflection layer was traced for a total distance of 2367 km to determine annual mean surface mass balance (SMB) for the period from approx. Nov 2004 to Dec 2014. Vertical firn density profiles were collected during the same measurement season along the flight track in the frame of the iSTAR campaign by means of Neutron Probe (NP) measurements. Annual markers were extracted from these profiles and used for the layer dating. A regional scale density-depth profile was estimated from all NP measurements and used for the conversion of two-way travel times (TWT) of the traced layer to mean annual SMB. Catchment wide SMB interpolation estimates were calculated by means of an ordinary logarithmic kriging (OLK) algorithm, which is applied to the alongtrack SMB estimates. Due to a data gap in the southern interior of PIG, complementary SMB estimates from RACMO (doi:10.5194/tc-12-1479-2018) and MAR (doi:10.5194/tc-14-229-2020) regional climate models were used to produce a catchment wide mean annual SMB map. Amongst others, total mass input can be derived from this map to assess the mass balance of PIG for the considered SMB averaging period. This dataset includes the level 1b processed radargrams, the traced layer in units of TWT and mean annual SMB, and SMB OLK maps. The latter include error grids as well as the partitioning map between OLK SMB estimates and complementary simulated SMB estimates for the PIG catchment area.