Report on freshwater fluxes from surface mass budget and sub-shelf melt in Antarctica (D3.2)

• Main Author: Mottram, Ruth
• Format: Report
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2024
• Subjects: Antarc*; Antarctic; Antarctic Peninsula; Antarctica; East Antarctica; Ice Shelf; Ice Shelves; Southern Ocean; West Antarctica
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11096232

Net ice loss from Antarctica is predominantly observed in West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula, with East Antarctica close to a state of balance (Otosaka et al., 2023). The freshwater flux from the continent to the Southern Ocean is driven by solid ice flux, basal melting of ice shelves, and the loss of surface snow and ice by melt and runoff and the wind driven erosion of snow. This deliverable is a report on work carried out in work package 3 of OCEAN:ICE and focuses on the processes that lead to freshwater fluxes from Antarctica, primarily the runoff of surface melt water, wind driven erosion of surface snow. Antarctica is notable for very few in-situ observations, therefore we use new state-of-the-art regional climate simulations, including new parameterisations and data assimilation to calculate surface freshwater fluxes over the historical reanalysis period. We also include some insights on observed basal melting of ice shelves from observations with in-situ autonomous phase sensitive radar (ApRES) to assist in assessing satellite based estimates of ice shelf melt.