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

该奖项支持一个项目，该项目通过结合雷达测高和基于表面的冰芯积累测量，收集数据，以更好地了解松岛和斯韦茨地区西南极冰盖的物质平衡。该项目的学术价值在于，实地工作的结果将提供有关上个世纪十年平均积累的信息，并将有助于限制确定沿海变化如何向内陆传播的建模工作，以便更好地预测未来的变化。用干涉合成孔径雷达(InSAR)速度数据确定的盆地平均蓄积量与冰流量的比较将提供改进的质量平衡估计。对流速变化的研究将产生过去三十年的物质平衡记录。对卫星高度计记录的分析，结合年度累积估计，也将提供质量平衡变化和变异性的估计。这项工作的更广泛影响是，它将对气专委未来对海平面的估计做出重大贡献，这对预测海平面上升对沿海社区的影响非常重要。这项研究将有助于华盛顿大学和堪萨斯大学学生的研究生教育，并将通过私人投资机构直接参与课堂活动来丰富K-12教育。非正式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)的外联工作传播成果。所有野外和遥感数据集将由国家冰雪数据中心存档和分发。该项目与国际冰盖年相关，因为西南极冰盖正在失去质量，这在很大程度上是因为阿蒙森海岸冰川的迅速变薄，因此，它将直接解决国家科学基金会国际冰盖年对“冰盖历史和动力学”的重视。该项目的范围也是国际化的。

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.