Project Title

NSFGEO-NERC: Investigating the Direct Influence of Meltwater on Antarctic Ice Sheet Dynamics

Summary

Event Number:
I-347-E
NSF / OPP Award 2053169

Program Director:
Dr. Kelly Brunt

ASC POC/Implementer:
Allison Barden / Diane Hutt

Principal Investigator(s)

Dr. Jonathan Kingslake
jonnyk@ldeo.columbia.edu
Columbia University
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
New York, New York

Project Web Site:
https://ldeo-glaciology.github.io/AntPen_NSF_NERC/

Location

Supporting Stations: Special Project
Research Locations: Flask Glacier

Description

Surface melting is widespread in Antarctica and predicted to increase significantly as the continent warms. This US-UK collaborative project will take steps toward understanding and predicting these changes. The science team will test three hypotheses: (1) Short-term changes in ice velocity indicated by satellite data result from surface meltwater reaching the bed of outlet glaciers in the Antarctic Peninsula; (2) this phenomenon is widespread in Antarctica today; and (3) this results in a measurable increase in mean annual ice discharge. The team will also conduct a continentwide remote sensing survey using synthetic aperture radar and multispectral imagery to comprehensively map meltwater on grounded ice and short-term velocity variations.

Field Season Overview

The 2026-27 season is the final one of this project and will entail recovery and demobilization of data and instruments from the Flask Glacier field site and a site slightly south of it. These two sites were installed and revisited in 2024-25 and 2025-26. The installed instrumentation includes a global navigation satellite system, passive seismometers, automatic weather stations, and ice-penetrating radar. Uncrewed-aerial-system survey work was conducted at the two sites in previous seasons.

For 2026-27, British Antarctic Survey members will deploy to the field sites to recover the instrumentation. No United States Antarctic Program (USAP) participants will deploy, but cargo and instruments will return to the continental United States via the USAP cargo system in Punta Arenas, Chile.