Title: Radar-Integrated Basal Melt Rates of Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica
Abstract: The Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) holds more than 70% of the world’s freshwater and can potentially raise global sea levels by up to 60 meters. Its stability depends largely on the buttressing effect of its extended ice shelves, which are influenced by marine ice formation, calving, and basal melting. In the last 20 years, basal melting has caused about half of the AIS’s mass loss. However, our understanding of this interaction is limited due to few direct observations. Our project investigates the applications of airborne radio-echo sounding in studying basal conditions of major ice shelves in Antarctica. Here, we focus on the Ross Ice Shelf (RIS), the world’s largest ice shelf, which acts as the barrier for both East and West Antarctica. By utilizing data from the ROSETTA-Ice survey collected from 2015 to 2017, we produced a map of RIS’s basal melt rates through the direct relationship with ice shelf englacial temperature and radar attenuation loss. We observed higher melting in Western RIS regions compared to the East, nevertheless, the average melt rate is relatively low. This map reveals spatial variations in basal melt rates that reflect on ocean circulation patterns, subglacial water discharge, and ice shelf structures.
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