Subglacial water flow paths beneath Whillans Ice Plain, West Antarctica

This dataset provides a geopackage of the predicted subglacial water flow pathways beneath Whillans Ice Plain, West Antarctica, the contributory Whillans Ice Stream and neighbouring Kamb and Mercer Ice Streams. Flow paths were estimated based on hydropotential gradients using static grids of ice-surface elevation from the REMA mosaic (Howat and others, 2019) and ice thickness from Bedmachine Antarctica version 3 (Morlighem and others, 2020; 2022) from which bed elevation is inferred.

Wilson Sauthoff (dataset creator) was funded by NASA award 80NSSC21K0912.

Bryony I. D. Freer (project lead) was supported by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Satellite Data in Environmental Science (SENSE) Centre for Doctoral Training (grant no. NE/T00939X/1).

Alternate title: Polar Data Centre (PDC) record GB/NERC/BAS/PDC/01854

Date (Publication): 2024-06-07

Citation identifier: http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/dms/metadata.php?id= / GB/NERC/BAS/PDC/01854

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
British Antarctic Survey		pdc@bas.ac.uk	Custodian
NERC EDS UK Polar Data Centre	Sauthoff, W., & Freer, B.	pdc@bas.ac.uk	Originator

Maintenance and update frequency: Unknown

Keywords

NDGO0001

NERC OAI Harvesting

NERC_DDC

GCMD Parameter Valids

EARTH SCIENCE > Cryosphere > Snow/Ice
EARTH SCIENCE > Hydrosphere > Ground Water > Ground Water Discharge/Flow

BAS Free-text keywords

Antarctica
Engelhardt Subglacial Lake
Siple Coast
Subglacial hydrology
Whillans Ice Plain
flow paths
subglacial lakes

Use limitation: This data is covered by a UK Open Government Licence ( http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/)

Access constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: This data is covered by a UK Open Government Licence ( http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/)

Language: English

Topic category

Geoscientific information

Begin date: 1961-01-01

End date: 2021-12-31

Reference system identifier: OGP / urn:ogc:def:crs:EPSG::4326

Distribution format

Distributor contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
Polar Data Centre - British Antarctic Survey		pdc@bas.ac.uk	Distributor

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
http	http://ramadda.data.bas.ac.uk/repository/entry/show?entryid=0df5d4e9-2fcd-4420-b403-24d76848a5a5	GET DATA

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Domain consistency

Measure identification: INSPIRE / Conformity_001

Conformance result

Title: INSPIRE Data Specification on unknown theme Guidelines

Date

Explanation: See the referenced specification

Pass: No

Statement: Ice-surface elevations from REMA (Howat and others, 2019) have relatively low error, typically less than 1 m. Sources of error in BedMachine Antarctica''s estimates of ice thickness and thus bed elevation include error in ice velocity direction and magnitude, error in surface mass balance, and ice thinning rates. Below grounded ice, the error in mass conservation derived ice thickness and bed elevation ranges from 36 m to exceeding 200 m based on the density radar sounding coverage (Morlighem and others, 2020; 2022). Within the region of subglacial flow path mapping, BedMachine Antarctica has a mean error of 74.8 m and a maximum error of 786.0 m, which is most prominent in the upper catchment of Kamb Ice Stream.