Surface Mass Balance Controlled by Local Surface Slope in Inland Antarctica: Implications for Ice‐Sheet Mass Balance and Oldest Ice Delineation in Dome Fuji
Brice Van Liefferinge, Drew Taylor, Shun Tsutaki, Shuji Fujita, Prasad Gogineni, Kenji Kawamura, Kenichi Matsuoka, Geir Moholdt, Ikumi Oyabu, Ayako Abe‐Ouchi, Abhishek Awasthi, Christo Buizert, Jean‐Charles Gallet, Elisabeth Isaksson, Hideaki Motoyama, Fumio Nakazawa, Hiroshi Ohno, Charles O’Neill, Frank Pattyn, Konosuke Sugiura
Abstract
Abstract The limited number of surface mass balance (SMB) observations in the Antarctic inland hampers estimates of ice‐sheet contribution to global sea level and locations with million‐year‐old ice. We present finely resolved SMB over the past three centuries in a low‐accumulation region with significant depth hoar formation on Dome Fuji derived from ∼1,100 km of microwave radar stratigraphy dated with a firn core. The regional‐mean SMB over the past 264 years is estimated to ∼22.5 ± 3.3 kg m −2 a −1 , but with large local variability of up to 30%. We found that local SMB is negatively correlated with surface slope at scales of a few hundred meters, resulting in anomalous zones of low SMB which represent as much as 8–10% of the total SMB on the inland plateau if the SMB‐slope relationship is more widely valid. This impact should be investigated further to improve estimates of Antarctic mass balance and sea‐level contribution.