Melt season lengths on Antarctic Peninsula Ice Shelves from passive microwave data
Abstract
Temperatures across Antarctica have been increasing. Surface melt season length is a climatic input for the evolution ice shelves, and this study uses passive microwave data to quantify the length of melting seasons across Antarctic ice shelves for the period of 1978 to 2017. Defense Meteorological Satellite Program passive microwave detection instruments provide daily surface brightness temperatures with a resolution of 25km. The presence of melting is determined by a method of identifying a bimodal distribution in the daily 19 GHz brightness temperature values in a specific pixel over a given year. The Larsen C, Wilkins, and George VI Ice Shelves surrounding the Antarctic Peninsula experience the longest melting seasons of any major ice surface in Antarctica. Melt season lengths, spatial variability, and melting patterns are compared for each of the three ice shelves. Each of these ice shelves show increasing trends in melt season lengths from 1978 through the mid 1990s, and shorter melt seasons in recent years. The Wilkins Ice shelf demonstrates the longest melt season lengths, with an average length of more than 70 days melting per year.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFM.C51B0983J
- Keywords:
-
- 0728 Ice shelves;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 0746 Lakes;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 0762 Mass balance 0764 Energy balance;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 0774 Dynamics;
- CRYOSPHERE