Elsevier

Global and Planetary Change

Volumes 98–99, December 2012, Pages 45-53
Global and Planetary Change

An investigation of Glacial Isostatic Adjustment over the Amundsen Sea sector, West Antarctica

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2012.08.001Get rights and content

Abstract

The present study focuses on the Amundsen Sea sector which is the most dynamical region of the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS). Based on basin estimates of mass changes observed by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and volume changes observed by the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat), the mean mass change induced by Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA) is derived. This mean GIA-induced mass change is found to be 34.1 ± 11.9 Gt/yr, which is significantly larger than the predictions of current GIA models. We show that the corresponding mean elevation change of 23.3 ± 7.7 mm/yr in the Amundsen Sea sector is in good agreement with the uplift rates obtained from observations at three GPS sites. Utilising ICESat observations, the observed uplift rates were corrected for elastic deformations due to present-day ice-mass changes. Based on the GRACE-derived mass change estimate and the inferred GIA correction, we inferred a present-day ice-mass loss of − 98.9 ± 13.7 Gt/yr for the Amundsen Sea sector. This is equivalent to a global eustatic sea-level rise of 0.27 ± 0.04 mm/yr. Compared to the results relying on GIA model predictions, this corresponds to an increase of the ice-mass loss or sea-level rise, respectively, of about 40%.

Highlights

► The study focuses on the region of the Amundsen Sea sector (West Antarctica). ► We assessed the GIA effect from a combination of ICESat and GRACE data. ► Inferred GIA effect is significantly larger than current GIA model predictions. ► The GIA results were validated using GPS-derived vertical crustal deformation.

Introduction

The determination of the mass balance of the ice sheets and of their contribution to global sea-level changes is one of the most challenging tasks of Earth system research. To reach more reliable estimates of those changes, one can utilise present-day gravity and altimetry satellite missions which provide much more suitable data than previously. The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) (Tapley et al., 2004) observes temporal gravity changes from which surface mass changes over a given region can be deduced (gravity-change method). However, GRACE is sensitive to the integral signal of all mass changes. Therefore, it is not possible to distinguish between mass changes caused by present-day ice-mass variations and other superimposed mass signals like the Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA). In this paper, GIA denotes the description of the visco-elastic response of the Earth to changing ice loads through glacial history. The solid Earth reaction to present ice-mass changes should be described by an immediate elastic response and not be included in the GIA model. For the entire Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) the expected mass change effect due to GIA is of similar order of magnitude as the ongoing present-day ice-mass change (e.g. Horwath and Dietrich, 2009). Therefore, a sound knowledge of the GIA signal is of crucial importance for a precise ice-mass change estimation.

The Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) on board the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) (Zwally et al., 2002) measures temporal changes of the ice surface elevation (altimetry method). This method requires additional information on the density of the ice-firn layers if the observed height or volume changes are to be converted into ice-mass changes. For the altimetry method, in the critical regions the GIA correction is about two to three orders smaller than the measured elevation change. Therefore, it is much less sensitive to uncertainties in the GIA correction than the gravity-change method.

Available GIA models consist of a visco-elastic Earth model and a glacial history. For the AIS, the latter is poorly constrained, since indications on the changing sea level and on former ice margins are still sparse (e.g. Larter et al., 2007). Additionally, there exist substantial differences in the Earth's structure between East and West Antarctica (Morelli and Danesi, 2004) which are not yet reflected in the adopted rheological models. Therefore, GIA predictions still have large uncertainties, especially for West Antarctica. Several authors proposed the combination of GRACE and ICESat observations to infer present-day GIA predictions which do not depend on the glacial history of the AIS. The iterative approach suggested by Velicogna and Wahr (2002) deduces the spatial GIA pattern from the overall GRACE geoid trend by subtracting the geoid signal of the ICESat-derived ice-mass change. In the next iteration step, the ICESat observations are corrected for the previously inferred height changes due to GIA. Finally, the derived vertical crustal deformations induced by GIA are compared to those observed at continuous Global Positioning System (GPS) sites. This allows to relate possible discrepancies to an error in the applied ice-firn density assumption. Riva et al. (2009) presented a single step approach which combines GRACE, ICESat and density models of the ice-firn layers and of the Earth's mantle. This approach benefits from the density contrast between the ice-firn density and mantle density, thus allowing to distinguish between ice and solid Earth mass changes.

The present study focuses on the Amundsen Sea embayment, West Antarctica (cf. Fig. 1). There, the major part of the ice-mass loss of the entire AIS takes place, which causes a significant contribution to global sea-level rise (e.g. Rignot et al., 2008, Horwath and Dietrich, 2009). This ice-mass loss can be observed especially in the drainage basins of Pine Island Glacier, Thwaites Glacier and Smith Glacier (PITS). Altogether, about 25% of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) drains into the Amundsen Sea embayment (Larter et al., 2009). Utilising GRACE and ICESat observations for the concurrent six-year observation period, robust regional estimates of the mass and volume changes for the PITS area are derived. Combining these results with reasonable assumptions for the ice-firn density and mantle density we come to a model-independent average estimate of the GIA-induced vertical crustal deformation (“observed GIA”). Finally, we validate our findings comparing these deformation rates with those derived by GPS observations at three bedrock sites in the area under investigation.

Section snippets

Present-day mass- and volume-changes

For any specific region of the AIS the total observable (e.g. by means of satellite gravimetry) present-day mass change with respect to a reference state ΔMobs as well as its linear temporal change ΔM˙obs=d(ΔMobs)/dt can be decomposed into the following components:ΔM˙obs=ΔM˙gia+(ΔM˙ice+ΔM˙ela).

While ΔM˙gia denotes the GIA-induced mass change over the region of interest, the term in brackets summarises all mass changes related to present-day changes of the ice sheet's mass. In detail, this

GIA models

Usually, GIA model predictions are used to correct satellite observations for superimposed GIA signals. In this study we use GIA predictions by the regional model IJ05 (Ivins and James, 2005) and the global model ICE-5G (VM2) (Peltier, 2004) to compare them with our observed GIA corrections. The model predictions shown in Fig. 2a (kindly provided by E. Ivins) are based on the IJ05 ice-load history for Antarctica. The underlying compressible Earth model comprises an elastic lithosphere of 100 km

Results

The combined linear and seasonal model (Fig. 3a—black curve) which was fitted to the GRACE-derived mass change time series (Fig. 3a—green curve) depicts a dominating linear mass decrease and a seasonal signal with a peak-to-trough difference of 37.0 Gt. As described in Section 2.3, the GRACE-derived mass trend includes the effect of present-day ice-mass changes and mass change due to GIA ΔM˙obs=ΔM˙gia+ΔM˙ice=ΔM˙GRACE and amounts to ΔM˙GRACE=64.8±6.8Gt/yr. Our overall error estimate for the

Discussion

The comparison of our derived GIA results with the model predictions listed in Table 1 reveals that our numbers are significantly larger. To validate our results we compare them to the observed uplift rates at the three GPS campaign sites corrected for the elastic uplift due to present-day ice-mass changes. The corrected observed vertical deformation rates (cf. Table 3) indicate a non-uniform, spatially varying GIA pattern for the PITS basin. Nevertheless, the mean uplift rate of 19.5 mm/yr

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and partly by the European Science Foundation COST Action ES0701 “Improved constraints on models of Glacial Isostatic Adjustment”. The field work was carried out during the R/V “Polarstern” cruises ANT-XXIII/4 and ANT-XXVI/3. We like to thank the chief scientist Karsten Gohl, the helicopter crew and all participants for their support. All figures were prepared using the GMT graphics package (Wessel and Smith, 1998). We thank

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