Estimating Antarctic surface melt rates using passive microwave data calibrated with weather station observations

Di Biase, Valeria; Kuipers Munneke, Peter; Wouters, Bert; van den Broeke, Michiel R.; van Tiggelen, Maurice

doi:10.5194/tc-20-87-2026

Articles | Volume 20, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-20-87-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-20-87-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 1

Research article

|

07 Jan 2026

Research article |

| 07 Jan 2026

Estimating Antarctic surface melt rates using passive microwave data calibrated with weather station observations

Valeria Di Biase, Peter Kuipers Munneke, Bert Wouters, Michiel R. van den Broeke, and Maurice van Tiggelen

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-20-87-2026-supplement

Data sets

Annual Antarctic Surface Melt Maps (2011–12 to 2020–21) from SSMIS 19 GHz V. Di Biase https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16738423

IMAU Antarctic automatic weather station data, including surface radiation balance (1995-2022) M. Van Tiggelen et al. https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.974080

Model code and software

IMAU-ice-and-climate/IMAU-pyEBM: First version archived on Zenodo (v1.0.1) M. Van Tiggelen https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15082295

Short summary

We produce annual maps of Antarctic surface melt volumes from 2012 to 2021 using satellite microwave data. We detect melting days from thresholds on the satellite signal and then use actual melt measurements from weather stations to convert those signals into water‑equivalent volumes. Our maps capture known melt hotspots and show slightly lower totals than climate models. This dataset supports climate and ice‑shelf studies.