Browse by author
Lookup NU author(s): Professor Neil RossORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Subglacial water plays an important role in ice sheet dynamics and stability. Subglacial lakes are often located at the onset of ice streams and have been hypothesised to enhance ice flow downstream by lubricating the ice–bed interface. The most recent subglacial-lake inventory of Antarctica mapped nearly 400 lakes, of which ∼ 14 % are found in West Antarctica. Despite the potential importance of subglacial water for ice dynamics, there is a lack of detailed subglacial-water characterisation in West Antarctica. Using radio-echo sounding data, we analyse the ice–bed interface to detect subglacial lakes. We report 33 previously uncharted subglacial lakes and present a systematic analysis of their physical properties. This represents a ∼ 40 % increase in subglacial lakes in West Antarctica. Additionally, a new digital elevation model of basal topography of the Ellsworth Subglacial Highlands was built and used to create a hydropotential model to simulate the subglacial hydrological network. This allows us to characterise basal hydrology, determine subglacial water catchments and assess their connectivity. We show that the simulated subglacial hydrological catchments of the Rutford Ice Stream, Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier do not correspond to their ice surface catchments.
Author(s): Napoleoni F, Jamieson SSR, Ross N, Bentley MJ, Rivera A, Smith AM, Siegert MJ, Paxman GJG, Gacitua G, Uribe JA, Zamora R, Brisbourne AM, Vaughan DG
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: The Cryosphere
Year: 2020
Volume: 14
Pages: 4507–4524
Print publication date: 10/12/2020
Online publication date: 10/12/2020
Acceptance date: 25/09/2020
Date deposited: 15/03/2021
ISSN (print): 1994-0416
ISSN (electronic): 1994-0424
Publisher: Copernicus GmbH
URL: https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-4507-2020
DOI: 10.5194/tc-14-4507-2020
Altmetrics provided by Altmetric
