Building multi-satellite DEM time series for insight into mélange inside large rifts in Antarctica

Xia, Menglian; Li, Rongxing; Scaioni, Marco; An, Lu; Li, Zhenshi; Qiao, Gang

doi:10.5194/tc-19-6749-2025

Articles | Volume 19, issue 12

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-6749-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-19-6749-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 12

Research article

|

11 Dec 2025

Research article |

| 11 Dec 2025

Building multi-satellite DEM time series for insight into mélange inside large rifts in Antarctica

Menglian Xia, Rongxing Li, Marco Scaioni, Lu An, Zhenshi Li, and Gang Qiao

Data sets

Dataset belonging to the article: Building multi-satellite DEM time series for insight into mélange inside large rifts in Antarctica Menglian Xia et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15260323

The Reference Elevation Model of Antarctica - Strips, Version 4.1 (V1) I. Howat et al. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/X7NDNY

ITS_LIVE Landsat Image-Pair Glacier and Ice Sheet Surface Velocities, Version 1 A. S. Gardner et al. https://doi.org/10.5067/IMR9D3PEI28U

Model code and software

MDAM (multi-temporal DEM adjustment model) Menglian Xia et al. https://github.com/menglianxia/MDAM

Short summary

We propose an innovative multi-satellite DEM adjustment model (MDAM) that removes biases in elevation between sub-DEMs across ice shelves. Our results reveal quantitative 3D structural and mélange features of a ~50 km long rift. For first time, we found that while the mélange elevation decreased from 2014–2021, the mélange inside the rift experienced a rapid expansion, attributing to newly calved shelf ice from rift walls, associated rift widening, and other rift-mélange interaction factors.