Mass Balance and Climate of the Ablation Zone of the Taylor Glacier, Antarctica Andrew Bliss and Kurt Cuffey Department of Geography, University of California at Berkeley, 507 McCone Hall #4740, Berkeley, CA 94720 [email protected] http://geography.berkeley.edu/~abliss/
Abstract We explore the relationships between climate and ablation on the Taylor Glacier, Antarctica on hourly to annual timescales. A simple physically- based model that predicts ablation from weather station measurements on Map of Taylor Glacier, Antarctica. The squares identify weather the Taylor Glacier is presented along with a set of criteria to distinguish station locations. The red circles show ablation stake locations. North between predominant weather patterns on the glacier. Two case studies of is up. The equilibrium line is close to the cyan station, everything to high ablation events are presented. Advanced Very High Resolution the east is blue ice. The inset map is a digital elevation model of Radiometer imagery and NOAA-NCEP Reanalysis data are included to Antarctica, showing the location of the Taylor Glacier. give the broader context of the weather station measurements and to help connect the local scale of weather station measurements to the broader scale of climate model output. A novel method of visualizing these disparate data is also demonstrated. grees) ind Direction W (de Taylor Glacier Taylor Glacier ind Speed W (m/s)
Motivations of a katabatic wind event and is identified as such by a set of criteria we defined to distinguish among 4 grees C)
emperature The interactions between climate and the Antarctic Ice Sheet are interesting because the response of the different "modes" of weather variability on the Taylor Glacier: storm, katabatic wind, calm, and diurnal