4D ANTARCTICA
Ice sheets are a key component of the Earth system, impacting on global sea level, ocean circulation and bio-geochemical processes. In Antarctica, significant quantities of liquid water are being produced and transported at the ice sheet surface, base, and beneath its floating sections, and this water is in turn interacting with the ice sheet itself. Despite the key role that hydrology plays on the ice sheet environment there is still no global hydrological budget for Antarctica.
The ESA project 4DAntarctica aims to advance the understanding of the Antarctic Ice Sheet’s supra and sub-glacial hydrology, its evolution, and its role within the broader ice sheet and ocean systems.
The project addresses the following specific objectives:
- Creating and consolidating an unprecedented dataset composed of ice-sheet wide hydrology and lithospheric products, Earth Observation datasets, and state of the art ice-sheet and hydrology models
- Improving our understanding of the physical interaction between electromagnetic radiation, the ice sheet, and liquid water
- Developing techniques and algorithms to detect surface and basal melting from satellite observations in conjunction with numerical modelling
- Applying these new techniques at local sites and across the continental ice sheet to monitor water dynamics and derive new hydrology datasets
- Performing a scientific assessment of Antarctic Ice Sheet hydrology and of its role in shaping current changes affecting the ice sheet
- Proposing a future roadmap for enhanced observation of Antarctica’s hydrological cycle
To achieve these objectives, the consortium will make use of a plethora of Earth Observation missions such as CryoSat2, SMOS, Sentinel1&2, ERS1&2, ENVISAT, AMSR-E, TanDEM-X, Landsat, in conjunction with numerical models of ice sheet.
The consortium of the 4DAntarctica project consists of 12 different partners. DLR provides TanDEM-X data to measure elevation changes of remote ice sheets and to validate hydrologic products in high geometric resolution.
Duration:
2019 – 2022
Project partners:
The University of Edinburgh, University of Leeds, Lancaster University, ETH Zürich, Institute for Applied Physics “Nello Carrara” (IFAC CNR), Institute of Environmental Geosciences (CNRS Grenoble), Environmental Earth Observation Information Technology (ENVEO), Shepherd Space, British Antarctic Survey (BAS), Technical University of Denmark (DTU), EarthWave