Characterization and formation of melt layers in polar snow : observations and experiments from West Antarctica

• Published in: Journal of Glaciology
• Main Authors: Das, Sarah B., Alley, Richard B.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: International Glaciological Society 2005
• Subjects: Antarctic; The Antarctic; West Antarctica; Siple; Siple Dome; Antarc*; Antarctica; ice core; Ice Sheet; Journal of Glaciology
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/1912/3846

Author Posting. © International Glaciological Society, 2005. This article is posted here by permission of International Glaciological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Glaciology 51 (2005): 307-312, doi:10.3189/172756505781829395. Surface melting rarely occurs across most of the Antarctic ice sheet, away from the warmer coastal regions. Nonetheless, isolated melt features are preserved in the firn and ice in response to infrequent and short-lived melting events. An understanding of the formation and occurrence of these melt layers will help us to interpret records of past melt occurrences from polar ice cores such as the Siple Dome ice-core record from West Antarctica. A search in the near-surface firn in West Antarctica found that melt features are extremely rare, and consist of horizontal, laterally continuous, one to a few millimeter thick, ice layers with few air bubbles. The melt layers found date from the 1992/93 and 1991/92 summers. Field experiments to investigate changes in stratigraphy taking place during melt events reproduced melt features as seen in the natural stratigraphy. Melting conditions of varying intensity were created by passively heating the near-surface air for varying lengths of time inside a clear plastic hotbox. Melt layers formed due entirely to preferential flow and subsequent refreezing of meltwater from the surface into near-surface, fine-grained, crust layers. Continuous melt layers were formed experimentally when positive-degree-day values exceeded 18C-day, a value corresponding well with air-temperature records from automatic weather station sites where melt layers formed in the recent past. This research was supported by NASA grant NAG5-7776 and by US National Science Foundation grant OPP-9814485 to The Pennsylvania State University, and by a NASA Earth System Science Fellowship to S.B. Das.