Ice Shelf Basal Melt Rates and Drainage Basin Mask from IMBIE2

Dataset summary:

This data set contains the Antarctic averaged ice shelf basal melt rate estimates from Rignot et al. (2013), Adusumilli et al. (2020), Paolo et al. (2023) and Davison et al. (2023) and regional basin masks derived from the IMBIE2 drainage basin definitions from The IMBIE Team. (2018). The data provides regional mean basal melt estimates and uncertainties from several studies, along with corresponding drainage basin masks mapped on a 2km grid.

The drainage basin boundaries used to define regions in this dataset originate from the IMBIE2 (Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise) project. The IMBIE2 drainage basins delineate major ice shelves, ice sheet sub-regions and regions, enabling consistent spatial analysis across different datasets and studies.

These data are split in 3 files, respectively named: Mask_Iceshelf_IMBIE2.nc, Mask_SubRegions_IMBIE2.nc and Mask_Regions_IMBIE2.nc. Corresponding geopackage files, respectively named: Mask_Iceshelf_IMBIE2.gpkg, Mask_SubRegions_IMBIE2.gpkg and Mask_Regions_IMBIE2.gpkg are also added.

Variables included:

Basins

Regional mask values corresponding to IMBIE2 drainage basins rasterized from the original IMBIE drainaged basin shapefile.

Basins_extrap

As Basins but extrapolated into the ocean.

lat, lon

Latitude and longitude grids (degrees north/east).

MeltRignot, MeltAdusumilli, MeltPaolo, MeltDavison

Mean basal melt rates for ice shelves within each drainage basin from different studies (e.g. Rignot et al., Adusumilli et al., Paolo et al., Davison et al.).

Units: Gt/y

UncertaintiesRignot, UncertaintiesAdusumilli, UncertaintiesPaolo, UncertaintiesDavison

Associated uncertainties for the basal melt rates.

Units: Gt/y

AreaRignot, AreaAdusumilli, AreaPaolo

Region area used to compute the basal melt for each study.

Units: km²

NAME, ID, Regions

Metadata variables providing names, numeric IDs, and appartenance regions and sub-regions.

Spatial Resolution:

Grid resolution: 2 km

Grid size: 3041 x 3041

Format:

NetCDF-4

References:

Rignot et al.: Ice-Shelf Melting Around Antarctica.Science341,266-270(2013).DOI:10.1126/science.1235798

Paolo, F. S., Gardner, A. S., Greene, C. A., Nilsson, J., Schodlok, M. P., Schlegel, N.-J., and Fricker, H. A.: Widespread slowdown in thinning rates of West Antarctic ice shelves, The Cryosphere, 17, 3409–3433, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-17-3409-2023, 2023.

Davison et al.: Annual mass budget of Antarctic ice shelves from 1997 to 2021. Sci. Adv.9,eadi0186(2023).DOI:10.1126/sciadv.adi0186

Adusumilli, S., Fricker, H.A., Medley, B. et al. Interannual variations in meltwater input to the Southern Ocean from Antarctic ice shelves. Nat. Geosci. 13, 616–620 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-020-0616-z.

The IMBIE team. Mass balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2017. Nature 558, 219–222 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0179-y