EGU23-15919
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-15919
EGU General Assembly 2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Antarctica's subglacial hydrology

Mauro A. Werder1,2, Daniel Goldberg3, George Malczyk3, Kenneth D. Mankoff4, and Martin Wearing3
Mauro A. Werder et al.
  • 1Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Birmensdorf, Switzerland (werder@vaw.baug.ethz.ch)
  • 2Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology (VAW), ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
  • 3University of Edinburgh, School of GeoSciences, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
  • 4Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES); University of Colorado Boulder, USA

The components Antarctica's subglacial hydrology -for instance water sources, sinks, flow paths and catchments- are still poorly constrained.  In this work we assess the subglacial hydrology of the continent at high resolution (500m) using (1) water inputs from frictional melting derived with a higher order ice flow model combined with existing geothermal heat flux products, (2) BedMachine topography, and (3) a water flow routing model taking uncertainties into account.

We present the following modelling results: probabilistic maps of water flow paths and catchments, potential subglacial lake locations, fluxes across the grounding line, and melt or freeze-on rates due to water flow.  We also present locations where the drainage system configuration, such as the catchment size, is sensitive to model inputs and thus where future field investigations would be particularly valuable.

How to cite: Werder, M. A., Goldberg, D., Malczyk, G., Mankoff, K. D., and Wearing, M.: Antarctica's subglacial hydrology, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-15919, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-15919, 2023.