Is Dronning Maud Land mitigating sea level rise in the 21st century? Quantifying the anthropogenically induced change in snow accumulation in East Antarctica

• Applicant: Dr. Alexandra Zuhr
• Subject Area: Geodesy, Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing, Geoinformatics, Cartography
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 522419679

Anthropogenically induced warming of atmospheric temperatures leads to a mass loss of the Earth’s ice sheets and with this to an increase in the global mean sea level. A warmer atmosphere above the ice sheets can, however, also hold and transport more moisture which can result in an increase in snow accumulation. To better constrain the potential mass gain due to climate driven accumulation changes, QUASNO will assess the spatial and temporal variability of snow accumulation in the Atlantic Sector of East Antarctica for the past 200 years by reconstructing accumulation rates using new airborne radar data, ice cores and statistical tools. By combining the complementary data sets and using a spatial relationship between accumulation rate and surface topography, spatial accumulation fields will be generated. The sensitivity of accumulation rate to warming temperatures will be investigated by comparing trends from the new accumulation fields to temperature fields from reanalysis and ice cores data. Thus, QUASNO will help to answer the question of whether increasing snow accumulation can mitigate projected global mean sea level rise in the 21st century and thus reduce uncertainties in the projections of the contribution of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet to this increase.

• DFG Programme: Infrastructure Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 1158: Infrastructure area - Antarctic Research with Comparative Investigations in Arctic Sea Ice Areas
• International Connection: Belgium
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr. Reinhard Drews; Dr. Steven Franke
• Cooperation Partner: Dr. Marie Cavitte