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Significant Spatial Variability in Radar‐Derived West Antarctic Accumulation Linked to Surface Winds and Topography
Author(s) -
Dattler Marissa E.,
Lenaerts Jan T. M.,
Medley Brooke
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2019gl085363
Subject(s) - snow , orographic lift , geology , firn , atmospheric sciences , climatology , radar , spatial variability , precipitation , environmental science , antarctic ice sheet , cryosphere , meteorology , sea ice , geomorphology , geography , telecommunications , computer science , statistics , mathematics
Across the Antarctic Ice Sheet, accumulation heavily influences firn compaction and surface height changes. Therefore, accumulation varies over short distances (<25 km), complicating the derivation of ice sheet mass changes from altimetry and reducing how accurately field measurements can be spatially extrapolated. However, current atmospheric reanalyses have grid spacings (>25 km) that are too coarse to resolve this variability. To address this limitation, we construct a fine‐scale accumulation product from airborne snow radar observations by superimposing along‐track fluctuations in accumulation onto an atmospheric reanalysis product. Our resulting airborne product reflects large‐scale (>25 km) orographic precipitation patterns while providing robust and unprecedented insight into Antarctic accumulation variability on subgrid scales. On these smaller scales, we find significant, regionally dependent accumulation variability ( σ r e l a t i v e >40%). This variability in accumulation is correlated with variability in topographic surface slope in the wind direction ( p <0.01), confirming that subgrid‐scale accumulation variability is driven by snow redistribution by wind.