Measuring the location and width of the Antarctic grounding zone using CryoSat-2

oleh: G. J. Dawson, J. L. Bamber

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: Copernicus Publications 2020-06-01

Deskripsi

<p>We present the results of mapping the limit of the tidal flexure (point F) and hydrostatic equilibrium (point H) of the grounding zone of Antarctic ice shelves from CryoSat-2 standard and swath elevation data. Overall we were able to map 31&thinsp;% of the grounding zone of the Antarctic floating ice shelves and outlet glaciers. We obtain near-complete coverage of the Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf. Here we manage to map areas of Support Force Glacier and the Doake Ice Rumples, which have previously only been mapped using break-in-slope methods. Over the Ross Ice Shelf, Dronning Maud Land and the Antarctic Peninsula, we obtained partial coverage, and we could not map a continuous grounding zone for the Amery Ice Shelf and the Amundsen Sea sector. Tidal amplitude and distance south (i.e. across-track spacing) are controlling factors in the quality of the coverage and performance of the approach. The location of the point F agrees well with previous observations that used differential satellite radar interferometry (DInSAR) and ICESat-1, with an average landward bias of 0.1 and 0.6&thinsp;km and standard deviation of 1.1 and 1.5&thinsp;km for DInSAR and ICESat measurements, respectively. We also compared the results directly with DInSAR interferograms from the Sentinel-1 satellites, acquired over the Evans Ice Stream and the Carlson Inlet (Ronne Ice Shelf), and found good agreement with the mapped points F and H. We also present the results of the spatial distribution of the grounding zone width (the distance between points F and H) and used a simple elastic beam model, along with ice thickness calculations, to calculate an effective Young modulus of ice of <span class="inline-formula"><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M1" display="inline" overflow="scroll" dspmath="mathml"><mrow><mi>E</mi><mo>=</mo><mn mathvariant="normal">1.4</mn><mo>±</mo><mn mathvariant="normal">0.9</mn></mrow></math><span><svg:svg xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="65pt" height="10pt" class="svg-formula" dspmath="mathimg" md5hash="cbc2b6e2e322ef8e65d7777d688818c5"><svg:image xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="tc-14-2071-2020-ie00001.svg" width="65pt" height="10pt" src="tc-14-2071-2020-ie00001.png"/></svg:svg></span></span>&thinsp;GPa.</p>