Interannual snow accumulation variability on glaciers derived from repeat, spatially extensive ground-penetrating radar surveys

McGrath, Daniel; Sass, Louis; O'Neel, Shad; McNeil, Chris; Candela, Salvatore G.; Baker, Emily H.; Marshall, Hans-Peter

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-3617-2018

Articles | Volume 12, issue 11

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-3617-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-3617-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 12, issue 11

Research article

|

22 Nov 2018

Research article |

| 22 Nov 2018

Interannual snow accumulation variability on glaciers derived from repeat, spatially extensive ground-penetrating radar surveys

Daniel McGrath, Louis Sass, Shad O'Neel, Chris McNeil, Salvatore G. Candela, Emily H. Baker, and Hans-Peter Marshall

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-3617-2018-supplement

Data sets

GPR and associated observational data S. O'Neel, D. McGrath, G. J. Wolken, E. N. Whorton, S. G. Candela, L. C. Sass, C. J. McNeil, E. H. Baker, E. H. Peitzsch, D. B. Fagre, A. M. Clark, C. E. Florentine, Z. S. Miller, J. E. Christian, K. Christianson, E. L. Babcock, M. G. Loso, A. A. Arendt, E. W. Burgess, and A. Gusmeroli https://doi.org/10.5066/F7M043G7

"ArcticDEM", Harvard Dataverse C. Porter, P. Morin, I. Howat, M.-J. Noh, B. Bates, K. Peterman, S. Keesey, M. Schlenk, J. Gardiner, K. Tomko, M. Willis, C. Kelleher, M. Cloutier, E. Husby, S. Foga, H. Nakamura, M. Platson, M. Wethington~Jr., C. Williamson, G. Bauer, J. Enos, G. Arnold, W. Kramer, P. Becker, A. Doshi, C. D'Souza, P. Cummens, F. Laurier, and M. Bojesen https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/OHHUKH

Short summary

Measuring the amount and spatial pattern of snow on glaciers is essential for monitoring glacier mass balance and quantifying the water budget of glacierized basins. Using repeat radar surveys for 5 consecutive years, we found that the spatial pattern in snow distribution is stable over the majority of the glacier and scales with the glacier-wide average. Our findings support the use of sparse stake networks for effectively measuring interannual variability in winter balance on glaciers.