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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

Projected Seismic Activity at the Tiger Stripe Fractures on Enceladus, Saturn, From an Analog Study of Tidally Modulated Icequakes Within the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica

Abstract Dissipation of tidal energy is expected to generate seismicity on icy‐ocean worlds; however, the distribution and timing of this seismic activity throughout an orbital cycle is not known. We used new observations from an icy‐ocean‐world analog environment on Earth to examine the relationship between tidally driven tensile stress and seismic activity within an ice shell. We investigated a pair of rifts within Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf which are tidally stressed in a manner analogous to the orbital cycle of tidal stress experienced by Enceladus' Tiger Stripe Fractures. We found that seismic activity at the Antarctic rifts is sensitive to both the amplitude and the rate of tensile stress across the rifts. We combined these findings with calculated stress values along Enceladus' Tiger Stripe Fractures to predict seismic‐activity levels expected along the ice‐shell fractures. We predict a peak in seismicity along the four Tiger Stripe Fractures when Enceladus is 90°–120° past pericenter in its orbit around Saturn, at which point tensile stresses would reach ∼2/3 of their maximum value. We also used the magnitude distribution of icequakes along Antarctic rifts to investigate implications for the likely size of stick‐slip rupture patches along icy faults on Enceladus. Our findings predict that the Tiger Stripe Fractures should produce sustained, low‐magnitude seismic events that involve rupture along discrete portions of each fracture's total length. We predict that seismicity would fall to 50% of peak levels when stresses across the Tiger Stripe Fractures are dominantly compressional.

Olsen, Kira G.↗
DOE OSTI2022

Manganese Limitation of Phytoplankton Physiology and Productivity in the Southern Ocean

Although iron and light are understood to regulate the Southern Ocean biological carbon pump, observations have also indicated a possible role for manganese. Low concentrations in Southern Ocean surface waters suggest manganese limitation is possible, but its spatial extent remains poorly constrained and direct manganese limitation of the marine carbon cycle has been neglected by ocean models. Here, using available observations, we develop a new global biogeochemical model and find that phytoplankton in over half of the Southern Ocean cannot attain maximal growth rates because of manganese deficiency. Manganese limitation is most extensive in austral spring and depends on phytoplankton traits related to the size of photosynthetic antennae and the inhibition of manganese uptake by high zinc concentrations in Antarctic waters. Importantly, manganese limitation expands under the increased iron supply of past glacial periods, reducing the response of the biological carbon pump. Overall, these model experiments describe a mosaic of controls on Southern Ocean productivity that emerge from the interplay of light, iron, manganese and zinc, shaping the evolution of Antarctic phytoplankton since the opening of the Drake Passage.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Evaluating EAMv2 Simulated High Latitude Clouds Using ARM Measurements in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres

Here, this study evaluates high latitude stratiform mixed-phase clouds (SMPC) in the atmosphere model of the Energy Exascale Earth System Model version 2 (EAMv2) by utilizing one-year-long ground-based remote sensing measurements from the Atmospheric Radiation and Measurement (ARM) program. A nudging approach is applied to model simulations for a constrained comparison with the ARM observations. Observed and modeled SMPCs are sampled and collocated to address the difference in data resolution, so that we can consistently evaluate their macrophysical properties at the North Slope of Alaska (NSA) site in the Arctic and the McMurdo (AWR) site in the Antarctic. We found that EAMv2 overestimates SMPC frequency of occurrence at both sites. However, the model captures the observed larger cloud frequency of occurrence at the NSA site. For collocated SMPCs, the annual statistics of observed cloud macrophysics are generally reproduced at the NSA site, while at the AWR site, there are larger biases. Compared to the AWR site, the lower cloud top and cloud base and the warmer cloud top temperature observed at NSA are well simulated. On the other hand, simulated cloud phase is substantially biased. The model largely overestimates liquid water path, and the ice water path is underestimated at NSA, but at AWR, the liquid water path is frequently underestimated due to the dominance of snow in Antarctic SMPCs. As a result, the observed hemispheric difference in cloud phase partitioning is misrepresented in EAMv2. This study implies that additional model development is needed for high latitude mixed-phase clouds.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

A search for ultrahigh-energy neutrinos associated with astrophysical sources using the third flight of ANITA

The ANtarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) long-duration balloon experiment is sensitive to interactions of ultrahigh-energy (E>10 18 eV) neutrinos in the Antarctic ice sheet. The third flight of ANITA, lasting 22 days, began in December 2014. We develop a methodology to search for energetic neutrinos spatially and temporally coincident with potential source classes in ANITA data. This methodology is applied to several source classes: the potential IceCube-identified neutrino sources TXS 0506+056 and NGC 1068, flaring high-energy blazars reported by the Fermi All-Sky Variability Analysis, gamma-ray bursts, and supernovae. Among searches within the five source classes, one candidate was identified as associated with SN 2015D, although not at a statistically significant level. Finally, we proceed to place upper limits on the source classes. We further comment on potential application of this methodology to more sensitive future instruments.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Examination of Humidity and Ice Supersaturation Profiles Over West Antarctica Using Ground-Based G-Band Radiometer Retrievals

Humidity profiles retrieved from a ground-based millimeter-wave radiometer located at McMurdo Station, Antarctica and the West Antarctica Ice Sheet Divide are presented and their suitability to study the humidity of the polar climate is assessed. The dry conditions of the Antarctic winter and spring are ideal for ground-based millimeter-wave measurements and the retrievals appear to realistically reproduce the spatial and temporal variability of humidity at both sites. Furthermore, the radiometer has the ability to capture daily variability of very low humidity (0.5 to 4 g/kg) in the low-to-mid troposphere with an uncertainty of 10-20% during the Antarctic winter, spring, and summer. Despite the coarse vertical resolution (200-600 m in the first 4 km), the retrievals provide additional information with respect to the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) profiles used as background information. The radiometer is also able to realistically identify the location and frequency of supersaturated layers with respect to ice in the mid troposphere. The occurrence of supersaturated layers is correlated with the occurrence of ice clouds identified by a cloud mask. Overall, results show that ground-based microwave and millimeter-wave radiometry is a viable complement to satellite observations to provide continuous information on the thermodynamic state of the low-to-mid troposphere at high latitudes.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Design and pre-flight performance of SPIDER 280 GHz receivers

In this work we describe upgrades to the Spider balloon-borne telescope in preparation for its second flight, currently planned for December 2021. The Spider instrument is optimized to search for a primordial B-mode polarization signature in the cosmic microwave background at degree angular scales. During its first flight in 2015, Spider mapped ~10% of the sky at 95 and 150 GHz. The payload for the second Antarctic flight will incorporate three new 280 GHz receivers alongside three refurbished 95- and 150 GHz receivers from Spider's first flight. In this work we discuss the design and characterization of these new receivers, which employ over 1500 feedhorn-coupled transition-edge sensors. We describe pre-flight laboratory measurements of detector properties, and the optical performance of completed receivers. These receivers will map a wide area of the sky at 280 GHz, providing new information on polarized Galactic dust emission that will help to separate it from the cosmological signal.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2022

FROSch Preconditioners for Land Ice Simulations of Greenland and Antarctica

Numerical simulations of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets involve the solution of large-scale highly nonlinear systems of equations on complex shallow geometries. This work is concerned with the construction of Schwarz preconditioners for the solution of the associated tangent problems, which are challenging for solvers mainly because of the strong anisotropy of the meshes and wildly changing boundary conditions that can lead to poorly constrained problems on large portions of the domain. In this study, two-level generalized Dryja--Smith--Widlund (GDSW)--type Schwarz preconditioners are applied to different land ice problems, i.e., a velocity problem, a temperature problem, as well as the coupling of the former two problems. We employ the message passing interface (MPI)--parallel implementation of multilevel Schwarz preconditioners provided by the package FROSch (fast and robust Schwarz) from the Trilinos library. The strength of the proposed preconditioner is that it yields out-of-the-box scalable and robust preconditioners for the single physics problems. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time two-level Schwarz preconditioners have been applied to the ice sheet problem and a scalable preconditioner has been used for the coupled problem. The preconditioner for the coupled problem differs from previous monolithic GDSW preconditioners in the sense that decoupled extension operators are used to compute the values in the interior of the subdomains. Additionally, several approaches for improving the performance, such as reuse strategies and shared memory OpenMP parallelization, are explored. In our numerical study we target both uniform meshes of varying resolution for the Antarctic ice sheet as well as nonuniform meshes for the Greenland ice sheet. We present several weak and strong scaling studies confirming the robustness of the approach and the parallel scalability of the FROSch implementation. Among the highlights of the numerical results are a weak scaling study for up to 32,K processor cores (8,K MPI ranks and 4 OpenMP threads) and 566,M degrees of freedom for the velocity problem as well as a strong scaling study for up to 4,K processor cores (and MPI ranks) and 68,M degrees of freedom for the coupled problem.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2021

FROSch Preconditioners for Land Ice Simulations of Greenland and Antarctica

Numerical simulations of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets involve the solution of large-scale highly nonlinear systems of equations on complex shallow geometries. This work is concerned with the construction of Schwarz preconditioners for the solution of the associated tangent problems, which are challenging for solvers mainly because of the strong anisotropy of the meshes and wildly changing boundary conditions that can lead to poorly constrained problems on large portions of the domain. Here, two-level GDSW (Generalized Dryja–Smith–Widlund) type Schwarz preconditioners are applied to different land ice problems, i.e., a velocity problem, a temperature problem, as well as the coupling of the former two problems. We employ the MPI-parallel implementation of multi-level Schwarz preconditioners provided by the package FROSch (Fast and Robust Schwarz)from the Trilinos library. The strength of the proposed preconditioner is that it yields out-of-the-box scalable and robust preconditioners for the single physics problems. To our knowledge, this is the first time two-level Schwarz preconditioners are applied to the ice sheet problem and a scalable preconditioner has been used for the coupled problem. The pre-conditioner for the coupled problem differs from previous monolithic GDSW preconditioners in the sense that decoupled extension operators are used to compute the values in the interior of the sub-domains. Several approaches for improving the performance, such as reuse strategies and shared memory OpenMP parallelization, are explored as well. In our numerical study we target both uniform meshes of varying resolution for the Antarctic ice sheet as well as non uniform meshes for the Greenland ice sheet are considered. We present several weak and strong scaling studies confirming the robustness of the approach and the parallel scalability of the FROSch implementation. Among the highlights of the numerical results are a weak scaling study for up to 32 K processor cores (8 K MPI-ranks and 4 OpenMP threads) and 566 M degrees of freedom for the velocity problem as well as a strong scaling study for up to 4 K processor cores (and MPI-ranks) and 68 M degrees of freedom for the coupled problem.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

Processes Associated with Boundary Layer Cloud Ice Phase Precipitation in the High Southern Latitudes (Final Technical Report)

This is a final technical report for DOE Award No. DE-SC0018995. Using data collected during the MARCUS deployment of the 2nd ARM mobile facility, this project sought to address the following scientific questions: 1. What are the conditions that govern phase partitioning in supercooled boundary layer clouds over the high latitude Southern Oceans? 2. To what extent are supercooled mixed phase clouds responsible for the high cloud fractions over the Southern Ocean and do these mixed phase clouds contribute to the model biases in absorbed shortwave radiation? 3. Can the cloud properties and phase partitioning over the Southern Ocean be linked to the underlying aerosol environment? 4. How do the aerosol properties at the surface vary spatially and seasonally over the high latitude Southern Ocean and what processes control these features? 5. How well defined are the atmospheric compositional boundaries between Southern Ocean marine, Antarctic free tropospheric, and Antarctic surface airmasses, and how does this influence the chemistry and physics of the Southern Ocean atmosphere? In this project we published three peer review journal articles that address these questions.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

Permanent Stress Adaptation and Unexpected High Light Tolerance in the Shade-Adapted Chlamydomonas priscui

The Antarctic photopsychrophile, Chlamydomonas priscui UWO241, is adapted to extreme environmental conditions, including permanent low temperatures, high salt, and shade. During long-term exposure to this extreme habitat, UWO241 appears to have lost several short-term mechanisms in favor of constitutive protection against environmental stress. This study investigated the physiological and growth responses of UWO241 to high-light conditions, evaluating the impacts of long-term acclimation to high light, low temperature, and high salinity on its ability to manage short-term photoinhibition. We found that UWO241 significantly increased its growth rate and photosynthetic activity at growth irradiances far exceeding native light conditions. Furthermore, UWO241 exhibited robust protection against short-term photoinhibition, particularly in photosystem I. Lastly, pre-acclimation to high light or low temperatures, but not high salinity, enhanced photoinhibition tolerance. These findings extend our understanding of stress tolerance in extremophilic algae. In the past 2 decades, climate change-related increasing glacial stream flow has perturbed long-term stable conditions, which has been associated with lake level rise, the thinning of ice covers, and the expansion of ice-free perimeters, leading to perturbations in light and salinity conditions. Our findings have implications for phytoplankton survival and the response to change scenarios in the light-limited environment of Antarctic ice-covered lakes.

Plant Sciences↗
DOE OSTI2020

A Search for IceCube Events in the Direction of ANITA Neutrino Candidates

During the first three flights of the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiment, the collaboration detected several neutrino candidates. Two of these candidate events were consistent with an ultra-high-energy upgoing air shower and compatible with a tau neutrino interpretation. A third neutrino candidate event was detected in a search for Askaryan radiation in the Antarctic ice, although it is also consistent with the background expectation. The inferred emergence angle of the first two events is in tension with IceCube and ANITA limits on isotropic cosmogenic neutrino fluxes. Here we test the hypothesis that these events are astrophysical in origin, possibly caused by a point source in the reconstructed direction. Given that any ultra-high-energy tau neutrino flux traversing the Earth should be accompanied by a secondary flux in the TeV-PeV range, we search for these secondary counterparts in 7 yr of IceCube data using three complementary approaches. In the absence of any significant detection, we set upper limits on the neutrino flux from potential point sources. Finally, we compare these limits to ANITA's sensitivity in the same direction and show that an astrophysical explanation of these anomalous events under standard model assumptions is severely constrained regardless of source spectrum.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Measurement report: Understanding the seasonal cycle of Southern Ocean aerosols

Abstract. The remoteness and extreme conditions of the Southern Ocean and Antarctic region have meant that observations in this region are rare, and typically restricted to summertime during research or resupply voyages. Observations of aerosols outside of the summer season are typically limited to long-term stations, such as Kennaook / Cape Grim (KCG; 40.7∘ S, 144.7∘ E), which is situated in the northern latitudes of the Southern Ocean, and Antarctic research stations, such as the Japanese operated Syowa (SYO; 69.0∘ S, 39.6∘ E). Measurements in the midlatitudes of the Southern Ocean are important, particularly in light of recent observations that highlighted the latitudinal gradient that exists across the region in summertime. Here we present 2 years (March 2016–March 2018) of observations from Macquarie Island (MQI; 54.5∘ S, 159.0∘ E) of aerosol (condensation nuclei larger than 10 nm, CN10) and cloud condensation nuclei (CCN at various supersaturations) concentrations. This important multi-year data set is characterised, and its features are compared with the long-term data sets from KCG and SYO together with those from recent, regionally relevant voyages. CN10 concentrations were the highest at KCG by a factor of ∼50 % across all non-winter seasons compared to the other two stations, which were similar (summer medians of 530, 426 and 468 cm−3 at KCG, MQI and SYO, respectively). In wintertime, seasonal minima at KCG and MQI were similar (142 and 152 cm−3, respectively), with SYO being distinctly lower (87 cm−3), likely the result of the reduction in sea spray aerosol generation due to the sea ice ocean cover around the site. CN10 seasonal maxima were observed at the stations at different times of year, with KCG and MQI exhibiting January maxima and SYO having a distinct February high. Comparison of CCN0.5 data between KCG and MQI showed similar overall trends with summertime maxima and wintertime minima; however, KCG exhibited slightly (∼10 %) higher concentrations in summer (medians of 158 and 145 cm−3, respectively), whereas KCG showed ∼40 % lower concentrations than MQI in winter (medians of 57 and 92 cm−3, respectively). Spatial and temporal trends in the data were analysed further by contrasting data to coincident observations that occurred aboard several voyages of the RSV Aurora Australis and the RV Investigator. Results from this study are important for validating and improving our models and highlight the heterogeneity of this pristine region and the need for further long-term observations that capture the seasonal cycles.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2023

Barotropic tides in MPAS-Ocean (E3SM V2): impact of ice shelf cavities

Abstract. Oceanic tides are seldom represented in Earth system models (ESMs) owing to the need for high horizontal resolution to accurately represent the associated barotropic waves close to coasts. This paper presents results of tides implemented in the Model for Prediction Across Scales–Ocean or MPAS-Ocean, which is the ocean component within the U.S. Department of Energy developed Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM). MPAS-Ocean circumvents the limitation of low resolution using unstructured global meshing. We are at this stage simulating the largest semidiurnal (M2, S2, N2) and diurnal (K1, O1) tidal constituents in a single-layer version of MPAS-O. First, we show that the tidal constituents calculated using MPAS-Ocean closely agree with the results of the global tidal prediction model TPXO8 when suitably tuned topographic wave drag and bottom drag coefficients are employed. Thereafter, we present the sensitivity of global tidal evolution due to the presence of Antarctic ice shelf cavities. The effect of ice shelves on the amplitude and phase of tidal constituents are presented. Lower values of complex errors (with respect to TPXO8 results) for the M2 tidal constituents are observed when the ice shelf is added in the simulations, with particularly strong improvement in the Southern Ocean. Our work points towards future research with varying Antarctic ice shelf geometries and sea ice coupling that might lead to better comparison and prediction of tides and thus better prediction of sea-level rise and also the future climate variability.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

A clustering-based approach to ocean model–data comparison around Antarctica

The Antarctic Continental Shelf seas (ACSS) are a critical, rapidly changing element of the Earth system. Analyses of global-scale general circulation model (GCM) simulations, including those available through the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, Phase 6 (CMIP6), can help reveal the origins of observed changes and predict the future evolution of the ACSS. However, an evaluation of ACSS hydrography in GCMs is vital: previous CMIP ensembles exhibit substantial mean-state biases (reflecting, for example, misplaced water masses) with a wide inter-model spread. Because the ACSS are also a sparely sampled region, grid-point-based model assessments are of limited value. Our goal is to demonstrate the utility of clustering tools for identifying hydrographic regimes that are common to different source fields (model or data), while allowing for biases in other metrics (e.g., water mass core properties) and shifts in region boundaries. We apply K-means clustering to hydrographic metrics based on the stratification from one GCM (Community Earth System Model version 2; CESM2) and one observation-based product (World Ocean Atlas 2018; WOA), focusing on the Amundsen, Bellingshausen and Ross seas. When applied to WOA temperature and salinity profiles, clustering identifies “primary” and “mixed” regimes that have physically interpretable bases. For example, meltwater-freshened coastal currents in the Amundsen Sea and a region of high-salinity shelf water formation in the southwestern Ross Sea emerge naturally from the algorithm. Both regions also exhibit clearly differentiated inner- and outer-shelf regimes. The same analysis applied to CESM2 demonstrates that, although mean-state model biases in water mass T–S characteristics can be substantial, using a clustering approach highlights that the relative differences between regimes and the locations where each regime dominates are well represented in the model. CESM2 is generally fresher and warmer than WOA and has a limited fresh-water-enriched coastal regimes. Given the sparsity of observations of the ACSS, this technique is a promising tool for the evaluation of a larger model ensemble (e.g., CMIP6) on a circum-Antarctic basis.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Climatology and surface impacts of atmospheric rivers on West Antarctica

Abstract. Atmospheric rivers (ARs) transport large amounts of moisture from the mid- to high-latitudes and they are a primary driver of the most extreme snowfall events, along with surface melting, in Antarctica. In this study, we characterize the climatology and surface impacts of ARs on West Antarctica, focusing on the Amundsen Sea Embayment and Marie Byrd Land. First, we develop a climatology of ARs in this region, using an Antarctic-specific AR detection tool combined with the Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, version 2 (MERRA-2) and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Reanalysis v5 (ERA5) atmospheric reanalyses. We find that while ARs are infrequent (occurring 3 % of the time), they cause intense precipitation in short periods of time and account for 11 % of the annual surface accumulation. They are driven by the coupling of a blocking high over the Antarctic Peninsula with a low-pressure system known as the Amundsen Sea Low. Next, we use observations from automatic weather stations on Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf with the firn model SNOWPACK and interferometric reflectometry (IR) to examine a case study of three ARs that made landfall in rapid succession from 2 to 8 February 2020, known as an AR family event. While accumulation dominates the surface impacts of the event on Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf (> 100 kg m−2 or millimeters water equivalent), we find small amounts of surface melt as well (< 5 kg m−2). The results presented here enable us to quantify the past impacts of ARs on West Antarctica's surface mass balance (SMB) and characterize their interannual variability and trends, enabling a better assessment of future AR-driven changes in the SMB.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

Probabilistic projections of the Amery Ice Shelf catchment, Antarctica, under conditions of high ice-shelf basal melt

Abstract. Antarctica's Lambert Glacier drains about one-sixth of the ice from the East Antarctic Ice Sheet and is considered stable due to the strong buttressing provided by the Amery Ice Shelf. While previous projections of the sea-level contribution from this sector of the ice sheet have predicted significant mass loss only with near-complete removal of the ice shelf, the ocean warming necessary for this was deemed unlikely. Recent climate projections through 2300 indicate that sufficient ocean warming is a distinct possibility after 2100. This work explores the impact of parametric uncertainty on projections of the response of the Lambert–Amery system (hereafter “the Amery sector”) to abrupt ocean warming through Bayesian calibration of a perturbed-parameter ice-sheet model ensemble. We address the computational cost of uncertainty quantification for ice-sheet model projections via statistical emulation, which employs surrogate models for fast and inexpensive parameter space exploration while retaining critical features of the high-fidelity simulations. To this end, we build Gaussian process (GP) emulators from simulations of the Amery sector at a medium resolution (4–20 km mesh) using the Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS)-Albany Land Ice (MALI) model. We consider six input parameters that control basal friction, ice stiffness, calving, and ice-shelf basal melting. From these, we generate 200 perturbed input parameter initializations using space filling Sobol sampling. For our end-to-end probabilistic modeling workflow, we first train emulators on the simulation ensemble and then calibrate the input parameters using observations of the mass balance, grounding line movement, and calving front movement with priors assigned via expert knowledge. Next, we use MALI to project a subset of simulations to 2300 using ocean and atmosphere forcings from a climate model for both low- and high-greenhouse-gas-emission scenarios. From these simulation outputs, we build multivariate emulators by combining GP regression with principal component dimension reduction to emulate multivariate sea-level contribution time series data from the MALI simulations. We then use these emulators to propagate uncertainty from model input parameters to predictions of glacier mass loss through 2300, demonstrating that the calibrated posterior distributions have both greater mass loss and reduced variance compared to the uncalibrated prior distributions. Parametric uncertainty is large enough through about 2130 that the two projections under different emission scenarios are indistinguishable from one another. However, after rapid ocean warming in the first half of the 22nd century, the projections become statistically distinct within decades. Overall, this study demonstrates an efficient Bayesian calibration and uncertainty propagation workflow for ice-sheet model projections and identifies the potential for large sea-level rise contributions from the Amery sector of the Antarctic Ice Sheet after 2100 under high-greenhouse-gas-emission scenarios.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Variations in boundary layer stability across Antarctica: a comparison between coastal and interior sites

The range of boundary layer stability profiles, from the surface to 500 m a.g.l. (above ground level), present in radiosonde observations from two continental-interior (South Pole Station and Dome Concordia Station) and three coastal (McMurdo Station, Georg von Neumayer Station III, and Syowa Station) Antarctic sites, is examined using the self-organizing maps (SOMs) neural network algorithm. A wide range of potential temperature profiles is revealed, from shallow boundary layers with strong near-surface stability to deeper boundary layers with weaker or near-neutral stability, as well as profiles with weaker near-surface stability and enhanced stability aloft, above the boundary layer. Boundary layer regimes were defined based on the range of profiles revealed by the SOM analysis; 20 boundary layer regimes were identified to account for differences in stability near the surface as well as above the boundary layer. Strong, very strong, or extremely strong stability, with vertical potential temperature gradients of 5 to in excess of 30 K per 100 m, occurred more than 80 % of the time at South Pole and Dome Concordia in the winter. Weaker stability was found in the winter at the coastal sites, with moderate and strong stability (vertical potential temperature gradients of 1.75 to 15 K per 100 m) occurring 70 % to 85 % of the time. Even in the summer, moderate and strong stability is found across all five sites, either immediately near the surface or aloft, just above the boundary layer. While the mean boundary layer height at the continental-interior sites was found to be approximately 50 m, the mean boundary layer height at the coastal sites was deeper, around 110 m. Further, a commonly described two-stability-regime system in the Arctic associated with clear or cloudy conditions was applied to the 20 boundary layer regimes identified in this study to understand if the two-regime behavior is also observed in the Antarctic. It was found that moderate and strong stability occur more often with clear- than cloudy-sky conditions, but weaker stability regimes occur almost equally for clear and cloudy conditions.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Glacial geology of the Hudson Mountains, Amundsen Sea sector, West Antarctica

The Hudson Mountains are situated in the eastern Amundsen Sea sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, adjacent to Pine Island Glacier. They form a volcanic field of 17 stratovolcanoes and parasitic vents, preserved as nunataks. Two former tributaries of Pine Island Glacier (Larter and Lucchitta glaciers) flow through the mountains. Here we present a detailed study of the glacial geology of the area. We describe field observations and measurements of geomorphological features from 15 of the nunataks, meltwater ponds found on the surface of three nunataks and supraglacial features (ice dolines) from two sites near the present grounding line. Together these provide constraints on the past ice sheet extent, flow pathways and thermal regime, and enhance our understanding of the present hydrological regime – all of which are important as context for the observed modern ice sheet behaviour. We find evidence suggesting that all nunataks in the Hudson Mountains were covered by ice during the Last Glacial Maximum (defined here as 26.5-19 ka) and have since deglaciated. Faceted and polished erratic cobbles and boulders of exotic lithologies (syenites, alkali granites, granites, granodiorites, tonalites and gabbros) are numerous and perched on nunatak surfaces. A marked difference between the dominant erratic lithologies on nunataks adjacent to Pine Island Glacier (granite) and Lucchitta Glacier (granodiorite-tonalite) indicates that the ice sheet was transporting clasts from at least two distinct upstream source regions. The similarity in degree of weathering suggests, however, that all the erratics were transported by one phase of (warm-based) glaciation; their presence on or close to the summits of all except one nunatak indicates that the ice sheet during that time was at least 700 m thicker than present. These results are consistent with ice sheet model simulations which suggest that all nunataks in the Hudson Mountains were completely submerged by the Last Glacial Maximum ice sheet.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗