Widespread distribution of supraglacial lakes around the margin of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.

ABSTRACT: Supraglacial lakes are important to ice sheet mass balance because their development and drainage has been linked to changes in ice flow velocity and ice shelf disintegration. However, little is known about their distribution on the world's largest ice sheet in East Antarctica. Here, we use ~5 million km² of high-resolution satellite imagery to identify >65,000 lakes (>1,300 km²) that formed around the peak of the melt season in January 2017. Lakes occur in most marginal areas where they typically develop at low elevations (<100 m) and on low surface slopes (<1°), but they can exist 500 km inland and at elevations >1500 m. We find that lakes often cluster a few kilometres down-ice from grounding lines and ~60% (>80% by area) develop on ice shelves, including some pote

SUBMITTER: Stokes CR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6761196 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature