Spatial and temporal variability of snow accumulation in East Antarctica from traverse data

Massimo Frezzotti (1) , Michel Pourchet (2) , Onelio Flora (3) , Stefano Gandolfi (4) , Michel Gay (2) , Stefano Urbini (5) , Christian Vincent (2) , Silvia Becagli (6) , Roberto Gragnani (1) , Marco Proposito (1) , Mirko Severi (6) , Rita Traversi (6) , Roberto Udisti (6) , Michel Fily (2)

1 ENEA - Italian National agency for new technologies, Energy and sustainable economic development [Frascati]
2 LGGE - Laboratoire de glaciologie et géophysique de l'environnement
3 Dipartimento di Scienze Geologiche [Trieste]
4 DISTART - Dipartimento di Ingegneria delle Strutture, dei Trasporti, delle Acque, del Rilevamento, del Territorio
5 INGV - Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia - Sezione di Roma
6 Department of Chemistry

Recent snow accumulation rate is a key quantity for ice-core and mass-balance studies. Several accumulation measurement methods (stake farm, fin core, snow-radar profiling, surface morphology, remote sensing) were used, compared and integrated at eight sites along a transect from Terra Nova Bay to Dome C, East Antarctica, to provide information about the spatial and temporal variability of snow accumulation. Thirty-nine cores were dated by identifying tritium/b marker levels (1965-66) and non-sea-salt (nss) SO4 2- spikes of the Tambora (Indonesia) volcanic event (1816) in order to provide information on temporal variability. Cores were linked by snow radar and global positioning system surveys to provide detailed information on spatial variability in snow accumulation. Stake-farm and ice-core accumulation rates are observed to differ significantly, but isochrones (snow radar) correlate well with ice-core derived accumulation. The accumulation/ablation pattern from stake measurements suggests that the annual local noise (metre scale) in snow accumulation can approach 2 years of ablation and more than four times the average annual accumulation, with no accumulation or ablation for a 5 year period in up to 40% of cases. The spatial variability of snow accumulation at the kilometre scale is one order of magnitude higher than temporal variability at the multi-decadal/secular scale. Stake measurements and firn cores at Dome C confirm an approximate 30% increase in accumulation over the last two centuries, with respect to the average over the last 5000 years.

Domains: Glaciology

Massimo Frezzotti, Michel Pourchet, Onelio Flora, Stefano Gandolfi, Michel Gay, et al.. Spatial and temporal variability of snow accumulation in East Antarctica from traverse data. Journal of Glaciology, 2005, 51 (172), pp.113 à 124. ⟨10.3189/172756505781829502⟩. ⟨insu-00374309⟩