Identification

Title

Amundsen Sea Embayment accumulation variability measured with global navigation satellite system interferometric reflectometry

Abstract

Understanding how water vapor is transported to Antarctica and leads to snowfall is crucial for improving ice-sheet mass balance projections and interpreting ice-core records. Global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receivers distributed across Antarctica to monitor ice velocity and solid Earth motion can be used to understand accumulation, ablation, and snow redistribution at the ice-sheet surface on sub-daily timescales. Here, we present a forward model for reflector height change between the GNSS antenna phase center and the snow surface and an inverse framework to determine accumulation rate and near-surface firn densification from the reflector height time series. We use this model to determine accumulation at three long-term GNSS sites located in the Amundsen Sea Embayment (ASE) and at an array of GNSS receivers deployed in the 2007–2008 and 2008–2009 austral summers. From the GNSS interferometric reflectometry (IR) accumulation time series, we find that extreme precipitation (i.e., the 90th percentile of accumulation events) dominates total precipitation and that extreme event frequency varies seasonally. We use our GNSS-IR accumulation time series together with reanalysis products to characterize the atmospheric conditions that promote extreme snowfall in the ASE. The blocking pressure systems that promote extreme accumulation on Thwaites Glacier are facilitated by tropical teleconnections, specifically convection that promotes Rossby wave trains from the western Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans to the Amundsen and Bellingshausen seas.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7qc07w0

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2025-02-13T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

<span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:10pt;font-style:normal;" data-sheets-root="1">Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.</span>

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact