RADAR-DERIVED INTERNAL LAYERING AND BASAL ROUGHNESS CHARACTERIZATION ALONG A TRAVERSE FROM ZHONGSHAN STATION TO DOME A, EAST ANTARCTICA

The age of the surface blue ice in the Grove Mountains area is dated to be about 140 000 years, and one meteorite found here is 260 000 years old. It is inferred that the Grove Mountains blue-ice area holds considerable potential for paleoclimate studies.

Subglacial lakes are a unique environment at the bottom of ice sheets, and they have distinct features in radar echo images that allow for visual detection. In this study, we use machine learning to analyze radar reflection waveforms and identify candidate subglacial lakes. Our approach detects more lakes than known inventories and can be used to expand the subglacial lake inventory. Additionally, this analysis may also provide insights into interpreting other subglacial conditions.

We use satellite imagery and ice penetrating radar to investigate the stability of the Shackleton system in East Antarctica. We find significant changes in surface structures across the system and observe a significant increase in ice flow speed (up to 50 %) on the floating part of Scott Glacier. We conclude that knowledge remains woefully insufficient to explain recent observed changes in the grounded and floating regions of the system.

No subglacial lakes have been reported in Princess Elizabeth Land (PEL), East Antarctica. In this study, thanks to a new suite of airborne geophysical observations in PEL, including RES and gravity data collected during the Chinese National Antarctic Research Expedition, we detected a large subglacial lake of ~45 km in length, ~11 km in width, and ~250 m in depth. These findings will help us understand ice sheet stability in the PEL region.

Radar observation collected above Titan Dome of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is used to describe ice geometry and test a hypothesis that ice beneath the dome is older than 1 million years. An important climate transition occurred between 1.25 million and 700 thousand years ago, and if ice old enough to study this period can be removed as an ice core, new insights into climate dynamics are expected. The new observations suggest the ice is too young – more likely 300 to 800 thousand years old.