Amundsen Sea Bathymetry

Recently I have been working to produce a bathymetric map of sea-floor topography in Amundsen Sea, Western Antarctica. This is aimed at understanding better the conditions required for 'warm' Circumpolar Deep Water to penetrate the continental shelf and the flow of water within Pine Island Bay. This in turn will contribute towards a more thorough understanding of the mechanism of ice-ocean interaction in Pine Island Bay - a process which is likely to be driving the rapid thinning, acceleration and grounding line retreat of many of the glaciers which flow into this sector of the Amundsen Sea. This area of Antarctica is of prime importance as it has been identified as both a probable trigger and an early indicator of potential Western Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse.

I will use a method (see Smith and Sandwell, 1994, Bathymetric prediction from dense satellite altimetry and sparse shipboard bathymetry, J. Geophy. Res., 99) that combines dense satellite-derived gravity data and sparse ship depth-sounding data. The high degree of correlation shown between gravity and topography over a limited range of wavelengths can be used to infer bathymetry from gravity data over that waveband, with the ship sounding data used for calibration.

This work has now been published - click on the 'publications, presentations and awards' tab on the left for more details.

Gravity field in Pine Island Bay