Subglacial lakes and hydrology across the Ellsworth Subglacial Highlands, West Antarctica, 1977-2017

A new subglacial bed Digital Elevation Model (DEM) from Ellsworth Subglacial Highlands (ESH) was created from previously gridded bed elevation data and new unpublished radar data. The new DEM includes the upper reaches of Pine Island Glacier, Rutford and Institute Ice Streams and reveals new topographical features. The main findings on this new DEM are two linear deep throughs with a perpendicular transection valley near Subglacial Lake Ellsworth. Additionally, using the new DEM and ice surface elevation data from CryoSat2 ice surface DEM, a hydropotential model was built and used to create a detailed hydropotential model of ESH to simulate the subglacial hydrological network. This approach allowed us to characterize basal hydrology, subglacial water catchments and connections between them. In this characterization we noticed the mismatch between subglacial hydrological catchment and ice surfaces catchment of Rutford Ice Stream, Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier.





Funding was provided by NERC Antarctic Funding Initiative (AFI) grants NE/D008751/1, NE/D009200/1, and NE/D008638/1, and NERC grant NE/G013071/1.

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Date (Creation)
2020-10-06
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2020-10-06
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2020-10-06
Date (released)
2020-10-06
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1.0
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https://doi.org/10.5285/72f46ad0-063d-49a7-ba89-45edc5d9aac7
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GB/NERC/BAS/PDC/01401
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https://data.bas.ac.uk/

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NE/D008751/1
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NE/D009200/1
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NE/G013071/1
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Other citation details

Please cite this item as: Napoleoni, F., Jamieson, S., Ross, N., Bentley, M., Rivera, A., Smith, A., Siegert, M., Paxman, G., Gacitúa, G., Uribe, J., Zamora, R., Brisbourne, A., & Vaughan, D. (2020). Subglacial lakes and hydrology across the Ellsworth Subglacial Highlands, West Antarctica, 1977-2017 (Version 1.0) [Data set]. UK Polar Data Centre, Natural Environment Research Council, UK Research & Innovation. https://doi.org/10.5285/72F46AD0-063D-49A7-BA89-45EDC5D9AAC7

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Durham University

 		Napoleoni, Felipe Author

Durham University

 		Jamieson, Stewart Author

Newcastle University

 		Ross, Neil Author

Durham University

 		Bentley, Michael Author

Universidad de Chile and Universidad Austral de Chile

 		Rivera, Andrés Author
British Antarctic Survey Smith, Andrew Author

Imperial College London

 		Siegert, Martin Author

Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory

 		Paxman, Guy Author

Universidad Austral de Chile

 		Gacitúa, Guisella Author

Centro de Estudios Cientificos

 		Uribe, José Author

Centro de Estudios Cientificos

 		Zamora, Rodrigo Author
British Antarctic Survey Brisbourne, Alex Author
British Antarctic Survey Vaughan, David Author
NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre

PDCServiceDesk@bas.ac.uk

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As needed
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Completed
Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Science Keywords
Theme

  • Ellsworth Mountains

  • Pine Island Glacier

  • Rutford Ice Stream

  • Thwaites Glacier

  • subglacial hydrology
Place

  • West Antarctica, Ellsworth Subglacial Highlands Antarctica

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
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This data is supplied under Open Government Licence v3.0
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  • Climatology, meteorology, atmosphere
  • Elevation
  • Geoscientific information
  • Imagery base maps earth cover
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Begin date
1977-01-01
End date
2017-12-19
Supplemental Information

It is recommended that careful attention be paid to the contents of any data, and that the author be contacted with any questions regarding appropriate use. If you find any errors or omissions, please report them to polardatacentre@bas.ac.uk.

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European Petroleum Survey Group (EPSG) Geodetic Parameter Registry
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2008-11-12
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European Petroleum Survey Group

EPSGadministrator@iogp.org

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urn:ogc:def:crs:EPSG::3031
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6.18.3

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NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre

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Methodology:

We used four existing gridded bed elevation data to create a new Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of the Ellsworth Subglacial Highlands (ESH). This data include: BedMap2 (Fretwell et al., 2013), ice thickness measurements from DELORES (2007-2009) and CECs (2005/2006) (Siegert et al., 2012), new along-track ice thickness measurements from the 2014 CECs RES campaign (Rivera et al., 2015) and unpublished radar measurements from the CECs 2017 RES field campaign in ESH region using a Very High Frequency (VHF) radar and a Medium Frequency (MF) radar (Zamora et al., 2019; Uribe et al., 2019).





We used a 2 km grid mesh with a continuous curvature tension spline algorithm (Paxman et al., 2017) to grid the data. We masked the grid to remove interpolated values more than 5 km from the nearest measured data point and replaced them with BedMap2 bed elevation values. We down-sampled the original cell size of BedMap2 (1 km) to match the resolution of the new DEM (2 km) using the nearest neighbour algorithm. Values of bed elevation were calculated relative to the WGS84 ellipsoid using WGS84 EPSG3031 as spatial reference system. Additionally, we down-sampled de cell size of the ice surface data from CryoSat2 (Slater et al., 2018) to match the resolution of the new DEM (2 km) and we built a hydropotential model to determine the hydrological head, following Shreve (1972). Using this hydropotential model we simulated the subglacial drainage system of the ESH following Schwanghart and Scherler (2014). More details of the processing and modelling is provided in Napoleoni et al. (submitted).

Data collection:

Matlab R2020b



Reflex-Win v. 8.0.2



QGIS 3.2.1

Data quality:

In January 2014 ~1100 km of RES data collected by CECs over an area of ~7000 km2 were acquired with a line spacing of ~8 km. The CECs survey during December of the same year was collected over a nested grid around SLC and along the host subglacial trough further north towards RIS, surveying a total of ~1050 km. During December 2017 the CECs radar survey acquired a total of ~700 km of RES data along the same trough. We assume the same uncertainties as Bedmap2 for the region beyond Ellsworth Subglacial Highland.

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2020-10-06
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NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre

polardatacentre@bas.ac.uk

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Keywords

Ellsworth Mountains Pine Island Glacier Rutford Ice Stream Thwaites Glacier subglacial hydrology
GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

Elevation
Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Science Keywords

EARTH SCIENCE > Cryosphere > Glaciers/Ice Sheets > Glacier Elevation/Ice Sheet Elevation EARTH SCIENCE > Cryosphere > Glaciers/Ice Sheets > Glacier Topography/Ice Sheet Topography EARTH SCIENCE > Cryosphere > Glaciers/Ice Sheets > Glaciers


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