@article{58bfbaa02d8946798708f5abd77ed6e8,
title = "Observations of Buried Lake Drainage on the Antarctic Ice Sheet",
abstract = "Between 1992 and 2017, the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) lost ice equivalent to 7.6 ± 3.9 mm of sea level rise. AIS mass loss is mitigated by ice shelves that provide a buttress by regulating ice flow from tributary glaciers. However, ice-shelf stability is threatened by meltwater ponding, which may initiate, or reactivate preexisting, fractures, currently poorly understood processes. Here, through ground penetrating radar (GPR) analysis over a buried lake in the grounding zone of an East Antarctic ice shelf, we present the first field observations of a lake drainage event in Antarctica via vertical fractures. Concurrent with the lake drainage event, we observe a decrease in surface elevation and an increase in Sentinel-1 backscatter. Finally, we suggest that fractures that are initiated or reactivated by lake drainage events in a grounding zone will propagate with ice flow onto the ice shelf itself, where they may have implications for its stability.",
keywords = "Antartica, GPR, glaciology, hydrofracture, hydrology, meltwater",
author = "D. Dunmire and Lenaerts, {J. T.M.} and Banwell, {A. F.} and N. Wever and J. Shragge and S. Lhermitte and R. Drews and F. Pattyn and Hansen, {J. S.S.} and Willis, {I. C.} and J. Miller and E. Keenan",
note = "Funding Information: D. D. was supported by a NASA FINESST Fellowship (Award 80NSSC19K1329) and by a University of Colorado Seed Grant awarded to J. T. M. L. A. F. B. received support from the U.S. National Science Foundation under Award 1841607 to the University of Colorado Boulder, and from a CIRES Postdoctoral Visiting Fellowship. N. W. was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), Grant P2ELP2_172299. R. D. is supported by by the DFG Emmy Noether Grant DR 822/3‐1. I. C. W. was supported by a CIRES Sabbatical Visiting Fellowship. The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests. The authors thank Amber Leeson and another anonymous reviewer, and the editor Mathieu Morlighem, for their insightful feedback and helpful comments to advance this paper. Funding Information: D.?D. was supported by a NASA FINESST Fellowship (Award 80NSSC19K1329) and by a University of Colorado Seed Grant awarded to J.?T.?M.?L. A.?F.?B. received support from the U.S. National Science Foundation under Award 1841607 to the University of Colorado Boulder, and from a CIRES Postdoctoral Visiting Fellowship. N.?W. was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), Grant P2ELP2_172299. R.?D. is supported by by the DFG Emmy Noether Grant DR 822/3-1. I.?C.?W. was supported by a CIRES Sabbatical Visiting Fellowship. The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests. The authors thank Amber Leeson and another anonymous reviewer, and the editor Mathieu Morlighem, for their insightful feedback and helpful comments to advance this paper. Funding Information: Weather station, GPR, and GPS data are freely available at https://zenodo.org/record/3609294#.Xh-fGxdKhTY (weather station), https://zenodo.org/record/3609292#.Xh-fKRdKhTY (pre‐collapse GPR and GPS), https://zenodo.org/record/3609290#.Xh-fQRdKhTY (postcollapse GPR and GPS) or by contacting the corresponding author. Digital elevation models can be obtained from the Polar Geospatial Center's Reference Elevation Model of Antarctica ( https://www.pgc.umn.edu/data/rema/ ). Geospatial support for this work was provided by the Polar Geospatial Center under NSF‐OPP Awards 1043681 and 1559691. DEMs were provided by the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center and the Polar Geospatial Center under NSF‐OPP Awards 1543501, 1810976, 1542736, 1559691, 1043681, 1541332, 0753663, 1548562, and 1238993 and NASA Award NNX10AN61G. Computer time was provided through a Blue Waters Innovation Initiative. DEMs were produced using data from DigitalGlobe, Inc. Radar backscatter images were obtained from the Alaska Satellite Facility's Vertex data portal ( https://search.asf.alaska.edu/#/?flightDirs= ) and MERRA‐2 data can be accessed online (at https://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/reanalysis/MERRA-2/data_access/ ). Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright}2020. The Authors.",
year = "2020",
month = aug,
day = "16",
doi = "10.1029/2020GL087970",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "47",
journal = "Geophysical Research Letters",
issn = "0094-8276",
publisher = "American Geophysical Union",
number = "15",
}