IPY: Collaborative Proposal: Constraining the Mass-Balance Deficit of the Amundsen Coast's Glaciers

Joughin 0631973该奖项支持一个收集数据的项目，以更好地了解南极西部冰盖的质量平衡，在松岛和Thwaites地区，通过雷达测高和表面冰芯测量积累相结合。 该项目的智力价值在于，实地工作的结果将提供有关上个世纪以来十年尺度平均累积的信息，并将有助于限制建模工作，以确定沿海变化如何传播到内陆，从而更好地预测未来的变化。 将流域平均累积量与使用干涉合成孔径雷达（干涉合成孔径雷达）速度数据确定的冰流量进行比较，将提供更好的质量平衡估计。 对流速变化的研究将产生过去三十年来的质量平衡记录。对卫星高度计记录的分析以及对年累积量的估计也将提供对物质平衡的变化和可变性的估计。 这项工作的更广泛影响是，它将对气专委今后的海平面估计作出重大贡献，这对于预测海平面上升对沿海社区的影响十分重要。这项研究将有助于学生在华盛顿和堪萨斯大学的研究生教育，并将丰富K-12教育通过在课堂活动的PI的直接参与。非正式的科学教育包括每年在西雅图太平洋科学中心举行的极地科学周末为期4天的冰川流动演示。该项目还将通过冰盖遥感中心（CReSIS）的外联工作交流结果。所有实地和遥感数据集将由国家冰雪数据中心存档和分发。 该项目与国际冰年有关，因为南极西部冰盖正在失去质量，这在很大程度上是由于阿蒙森海岸冰川迅速变薄，因此，它将直接解决NSF国际冰年强调的“冰盖历史和动力学”问题。 该项目也是国际性的。

Joughin 0631973This award supports a project to gather data to better understand the mass balance of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, in the Pine Island and Thwaites region, through the combination of radar altimetry and surface-based ice-core measurements of accumulation. The intellectual merit of the project is that the results of the field work will provide information on decadal-scale average accumulation extending back through the last century and will help constrain a modeling effort to determine how coastal changes propagate inland, to allow better prediction of future change. Comparison of the basin averaged accumulation with ice discharge determined using Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) velocity data will provide improved mass-balance estimates. Study of changes in flow speed will produce a record of mass balance over the last three decades. Analysis of the satellite altimeter record in conjunction with annual accumulation estimates also will provide estimates of changes and variability in mass balance. The broader impacts of the work are that it will make a significant contribution to future IPCC estimates of sea level, which are important for projection of the impacts of increased sea level on coastal communities. The research will contribute to the graduate education of students at the Universities of Washington and Kansas and will enrich K-12 education through the direct participation of the PIs in classroom activities. Informal science education includes 4-day glacier flow demonstrations at the Polar Science Weekend held annually at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. The project also will communicate results through Center for the Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) outreach effort. All field and remotely-sensed data sets will be archived and distributed by the National Snow and Ice Data Center. This project is relevant to IPY in that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is losing mass, in large part because of rapid thinning of the Amundsen Coast glaciers so, it will directly address the NSF IPY emphasis on "ice sheet history and dynamics". The project is also international in scope.