Subglacial lake activity and hydrological connection in the Byrd glacier basin during 2003—2018: analysis of multimission satellite altimetry monitoring results

doi:10.11947/j.AGCS.2020.20190209

Abstract

Abstract: The movement of water beneath the Antarctic ice sheet and the activity of subglacial lakes have important effects on regional ice dynamics, grounding-line stability, and ice sheet mass balance. It is particularly important to monitor activities of subglacial lakes. Combining the ICESat and CryoSat-2 altimeter datasets, the repeat orbit method and differential DEM method were used to monitor the activity of 17 glacial lakes in the Byrd glacier basin for 16 years in this paper. In addition, the variation of average elevation and average water amount of each subglacial lake is calculated, and the hydrological characteristics of subglacial lake activity are summarized. We used the water potential equation to obtain the drainage pathways map in Byrd glacier basin and combined subglacial lake activity to analyze the hydrological relationship among them. Byrd₁ subglacial lake and Byrd₂ subglacial lake both have the periodic pattern of water storage and drainage activities about 2~3 years. Byrd₁ subglacial lake are mainly affected by the activity of upstream Byrd₂ subglacial lake. The water volume of Byrd_s9 subglacial lake and Byrd_s14 subglacial lake kept rising because of supplementary by upstream Byrd_s11 and Byrd_s15 drainage respectively.

Key words: altimetry, subglacial lakes, height change, drainage pathways, Byrd glacier basin

CLC Number:

P228.3
P332

CHEN Junlin, ZHOU Chunxia, ZHAO Qiuyang. Subglacial lake activity and hydrological connection in the Byrd glacier basin during 2003—2018: analysis of multimission satellite altimetry monitoring results[J]. Acta Geodaetica et Cartographica Sinica, 2020, 49(5): 547-556.

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