Development of a Passive Microwave Surface Melt Record for Antarctica and Antarctic Ice Shelves

Abstract:

Antarctica contains the largest mass of ice in the world and much time and energy has gone into researching the ice-ocean-atmosphere-land dynamics that, in a warming climate, have the potential to significantly affect sea levels throughout the world. While there are many datasets currently available to researchers examining sea ice extent and volume, glacier thickness, ice shelf retreat and expansion, and atmospheric variables such as temperature and wind speeds, there is not currently a dataset that offers surface melt extent of land ice in the southern hemisphere. The database outlined here uses the Cross-Polarized Gradient Ratio (XPGR) to show surface melt extent on a daily basis for all of Antarctica. XPGR utilizes passive microwave satellite imagery in the 19 GHz and 37GHz frequencies to determine the presence or absence of greater than 1% liquid water in the top layers of ice. Daily XPGR melt occurrence (1987-2014) was calculated for both the ice sheet as well as ice shelves on Antarctica, and is available as a GIS shapefile or asci text file.