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The Cryosphere Discuss., 5, 2061-2114, 2011
www.the-cryosphere-discuss.net/5/2061/2011/ doi:10.5194/tcd-5-2061-2011 © Author(s) 2011. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. |
Spatial and temporal variability of snow accumulation in Dronning Maud Land, East Antarctica, including two deep ice coring sites at Dome Fuji and EPICA DML
1National Institute of Polar Research, Research Organization of Information and Systems, Tokyo, Japan
2Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
3Division of Geodesy and Geoinformatics, The Royal Inst. of Tecknology, Stockholm, Sweden
4Kitami Institute of Technology, Kitami, Japan
5Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan
6Department of Earth System Science, Faculty of Science, Fukuoka University, Fukuoka, Japan
7Institute of Low Temperature Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan
8Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, P.O. Box 120161, 27515, Bremerhaven, Germany
9Department of Applied Environmental Science, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
10Faculty of Science, Department of Chemistry, Biology, and Marine Science, University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan
*now at: Tateyama Caldera Sabo Museum, Toyama, Japan
Abstract. To better understand the spatio-temporal variability of the glaciological environment in Dronning Maud Land (DML), East Antarctica, investigations were carried out along the 2800-km-long Japanese-Swedish IPY 2007/2008 traverse. The route covers ice sheet ridges and two deep ice coring sites at Dome Fuji and EPICA DML. The surface mass balance (SMB) distribution was derived based on analysis of isochrones within snow pits, firn cores and subsurface radar signals. The SMB averaged over various time scales in the Holocene was determined. This was then compared with various glaciological data. We find that the large-scale distribution of the SMB depends on the surface elevation, continentality and interactions between ice sheet ridges and the prevailing counterclockwise windfield in DML. A different SMB is found for the windward and leeward sides of the ridges. Local-scale variability in the SMB is essentially governed by bedrock topography which determines the local surface topography. In the eastern part of DML, the accumulation rate in the second half of the 20th century is found to be higher by 15 % compared to averages over longer periods of 722 a or 7.9 ka before AD 2008. A similar trend has been reported for many inland plateau sites in East Antarctica.
Citation: Fujita, S., Holmlund, P., Andersson, I., Brown, I., Enomoto, H., Fujii, Y., Fujita, K., Fukui, K., Furukawa, T., Hansson, M., Hara, K., Hoshina, Y., Igarashi, M., Iizuka, Y., Imura, S., Ingvander, S., Karlin, T., Motoyama, H., Nakazawa, F., Oerter, H., Sjöberg, L. E., Sugiyama, S., Surdyk, S., Ström, J., Uemura, R., and Wilhelms, F.: Spatial and temporal variability of snow accumulation in Dronning Maud Land, East Antarctica, including two deep ice coring sites at Dome Fuji and EPICA DML, The Cryosphere Discuss., 5, 2061-2114, doi:10.5194/tcd-5-2061-2011, 2011.