From ice core to ground-penetrating radar: representativeness of SMB at three ice rises along the Princess Ragnhild Coast, East Antarctica

The future contributions of the Antarctic Ice Sheet to sea level rise will depend on the evolution of its surface mass balance (SMB), which could amplify/dampen mass losses increasingly observed at the ice sheet's edge. In situ constraints of SMB over annual-to-decadal timescales consist mostly...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Glaciology
Main Authors: Cavitte, Marie G.P. (author), Goosse, Hugues (author), Wauthy, Sarah (author), Kausch, T. (author), Tison, Jean-Louis (author), Van Liefferinge, Brice (author), Pattyn, Frank (author), Lenaerts, Jan T.M. (author), Claeys, Philippe (author)
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2022
Subjects:
Accumulation
Antarctic glaciology
ice rise
ice core
groundpenetrating radar
Antarctic
East Antarctica
Princess Ragnhild Coast
The Antarctic
Antarc*
Antarctica
Ice Sheet
Journal of Glaciology
Online Access:http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:4673a595-c4a8-4cc9-b1d0-e05d1ee1565d
https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2022.39
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Summary:The future contributions of the Antarctic Ice Sheet to sea level rise will depend on the evolution of its surface mass balance (SMB), which could amplify/dampen mass losses increasingly observed at the ice sheet's edge. In situ constraints of SMB over annual-to-decadal timescales consist mostly of firn/ice cores that have a surface footprint cm. SMB constraints also come from climate models, which have a higher temporal resolution but a larger surface footprint of several km. We use ice-penetrating radar data to obtain an intermediate spatial and temporal resolution SMB record over three ice rises along the Princess Ragnhild Coast. The co-located ice cores allow us to obtain absolute radar-derived SMB rates at a multi-annual-to-decadal temporal resolution. By comparing the ice core SMB measurements and the radar-derived SMB records, we determine that pointwise measurements of SMB are representative of a small surface area, m radius extending from the ice core drill site for the ice rises studied here, and that the pointwise measurements are systematically 7–15 cm w.e. a lower than the mean SMB value calculated for the whole ice rises. However, ice core records are representative of an entire ice rise's temporal variability at the temporal resolution examined. Mathematical Geodesy and Positioning

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