Significant Spatial Variability in Radar-Derived West Antarctic Accumulation Linked to Surface Winds and Topography

Abstract

Across the Antarctic Ice Sheet, accumulation heavily influences firn compaction and surface height changes. Therefore, accumulation varies over short distances (<25 km), complicating the derivation of ice sheet mass changes from altimetry and reducing how accurately field measurements can be spatially extrapolated. However, current atmospheric reanalyses have grid spacings (>25 km) that are too coarse to resolve this variability. To address this limitation, we construct a fine-scale accumulation product from airborne snow radar observations by superimposing along-track fluctuations in accumulation onto an atmospheric reanalysis product. Our resulting airborne product reflects large-scale (>25 km) orographic precipitation patterns while providing robust and unprecedented insight into Antarctic accumulation variability on subgrid scales. On these smaller scales, we find significant, regionally dependent accumulation variability (𝜎(sub relative) > 40%). This variability in accumulation is correlated with variability in topographic surface slope in the wind direction (p < 0.01), confirming that subgrid-scale accumulation variability is driven by snow redistribution by wind.