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

该奖项支持一个收集数据的项目，通过雷达测高和基于表面的冰芯积累测量相结合，更好地了解位于松岛和思韦茨地区的南极西部冰盖的质量平衡。该项目的知识价值在于，实地工作的结果将提供回溯到上个世纪的十年尺度平均积累的信息，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。利用干涉合成孔径雷达（InSAR）速度数据确定的盆地平均冰量与冰流量的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的质量平衡记录。结合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质量平衡变化和变率的估计。这项工作的更广泛的影响是，它将对IPCC未来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pi直接参与课堂活动来丰富K-12教育。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为期四天的极地科学周末的冰川流动演示。该项目还将通过冰盖遥感中心（CReSIS）的外联工作通报结果。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。该项目与国际极地年相关，因为南极西部冰盖正在失去质量，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NSF国际极地年强调的“冰盖历史和动态”。该项目在国际范围内也是如此。

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.