Estimating surface melt in Antarctica from 1979 to 2022, using a statistically parameterized positive degree-day model

Abstract. Surface melt is one of the primary drivers of ice shelf collapse in Antarctica. Surface melting is expected to increase in the future as the global climate continues to warm, because there is a statistically significant positive relationship between air temperature and melt. Enhanced surface melt will negatively impact the mass balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) and, through dynamic feedbacks, induce changes in global mean sea level (GMSL). However, current understanding of surface melt in Antarctica remains limited in past, present or future contexts. Continental-scale spaceborne observations of surface melt are limited to the satellite era (1979–present), meaning that current estimates of Antarctic surface melt are typically derived from surface energy balance (SEB) or positive degree-day (PDD) models. SEB models require diverse and detailed input data that are not always available and require considerable computational resources. The PDD model, by comparison, has fewer input and computational requirements and is therefor suited for exploring surface melt scenarios in the past and future. The use of PDD schemes for Antarctic melt has been less extensively explored than their application to surface melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, particularly in terms of a spatially-varying parameterization. Here, we construct a PDD model, force it only with 2-m air temperature reanalysis data, and parameterize it by minimizing the error with respect to satellite observations and SEB model outputs over the period 1979 to 2022. We compare the spatial and temporal variability of surface melt from our PDD model over the last 43 years with that of satellite observations and SEB simulations. We find that the PDD model can generally capture the same spatial and temporal surface melt patterns. Although there were at most four years over/under- estimation on ice shelf regions in the epoch, these discrepancies reduce when considering the whole AIS. With the limitations discussed, we suggest that an appropriately parameterized PDD model can be a valuable tool for exploring Antarctic surface melt beyond the satellite era.