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

• Published in: Journal of Glaciology
• Main Authors: Cavitte, Marie G.P., Goosse, Hugues, Wauthy, Sarah, Kausch, Thore, Tison, Jean-Louis, Van Liefferinge, Brice, Pattyn, Frank, Lenaerts, Jan T.M., Claeys, Philippe
• Other Authors: UCL - SST/ELI/ELIC - Earth & Climate
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 2022
• Subjects: glaciology; radar; accumulation; surface mass balance; spatial representativity; ice core; Antarctic; The Antarctic; East Antarctica; Princess Ragnhild Coast; Antarc*; Antarctica; Ice Sheet; Journal of Glaciology
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/269505; https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2022.39

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.