Freshwater fluxes and climate change in the Antarctic Peninsula: a combined observational and modelling approach

Owing to its geography, extending far to the north from mainland Antarctica into the open ocean and the westerly wind circulation, the Antarctic Peninsula (AP) has a unique climate. It is one of the few regions in Antarctica that experiences significant surface melt and runoff. The freshwater that leaves the hydrological system of the AP glaciers reaches the surrounding ice-free land or flows in the surrounding oceans, where it has a considerable impact on the ecology and oceanography of the AP. Moreover, it is hypothesized that meltwater plays a pivotal role in the viability of the ice shelves that fringe long stretches of the AP coast. Being a region of fast atmospheric warming (three to four times the global average during the last five decades), the increase in meltwater production has presumably led to the disintegration of numerous ice shelves in the northern AP. As a result, grounded glaciers have accelerated and thinned, losing an estimated 20 Gt of ice per year to the surrounding oceans. It is anticipated that this process will continue in a future warming world; as such the AP can be regarded as an analogue of future disintegration of ice shelves further south, which are present along over 50% of the coastlines of East and West Antarctica. In this project, which is a close collaboration between the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and UU/IMAU, we aim at quantifying the freshwater flux from AP glaciers during the modern era (1989-present), using a combination of observations and modeling.