How can we automate future gridded Antarctic ice-sheet and bed mapping?

Area of Science:

• * Glaciology and Polar Science
• * Geophysics and Earth Observation

Background:

• * Airborne surveys are generating vast datasets for Antarctic ice sheet mapping.
• * Existing 'Bedmaps' face challenges including data disagreement, gaps, and interpolation issues.
• * These challenges impact critical components like ice thickness, topography, coastline, and grounding line.

Purpose of the Study:

• * To identify key challenges in generating accurate Antarctic Bedmaps.
• * To explore methods for automating Bedmap creation to meet modeling demands.
• * To improve the reliability of boundary conditions for ice-sheet models.

Main Methods:

• * Analysis of challenges arising from merging diverse airborne survey data.
• * Examination of interpolation inconsistencies across different Antarctic landscapes.
• * Identification of artefacts introduced during the integration of ice sheets, shelves, and seafloor data.

Main Results:

• * Data discrepancies and gaps hinder the creation of seamless Bedmap grids.
• * Merging different data types can introduce errors in sensitive grounding zone areas.
• * Current methods require extensive manual correction, slowing down dataset updates.

Conclusions:

• * Automation is essential to accelerate the production of updated Antarctic Bedmaps.
• * Addressing data integration and interpolation challenges is key to improving model accuracy.
• * Future Bedmaps need robust, automated processes to support ice-sheet research.