资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

Estimating the relative contributions of the atmospheric and dynamic components of ice sheet mass balance is critical for improving projections of future sea level rise. Existing estimates of changes in Antarctic ice‐sheet height, which can be used to infer changes in mass, are only accurate at multi‐year time scales. However, NASA's Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite‐2 (ICESat‐2) laser altimetry mission now allows us to accurately measure changes in ice‐sheet height at sub‐annual time scales. Here, we use ICESat‐2 data to estimate height changes over Antarctica between April 2019 and June 2020. These data show widespread increases in surface height over West Antarctica during the 2019 austral winter. Using climate reanalysis data, we show that 41% of increases in height during winter were from snow accumulation via extreme precipitation events – 63% of these events were associated with landfalling atmospheric rivers (ARs) which occurred only 5.1% of the time.

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