Full bibliography

Sub-ice shelf circulation and freezing/melting rates in ocean general circulation models depend critically on an accurate and consistent representation of cavity geometry. Existing global or pan-Antarctic data sets have turned out to contain various inconsistencies and inaccuracies. The goal of this work is to compile in- dependent regional fields into a global data set. We use the S-2004 global 1-minute bathymetry as the backbone and add an improved version of the BEDMAP topography (ALBMAP bedrock topography) for an area that roughly coincides with the Antarctic continental shelf. The position of the merging line is individually chosen in different sectors in order to get the best out of each data set. High resolution gridded data for upper and lower ice surface topographies and cavity geometry of the Amery, Fimbul, Filchner-Ronne, Larsen C and George VI Ice Shelves, and for Pine Island Glacier are carefully merged into the ambient ice and ocean topographies. Multibeam survey data for bathymetry in the former Larsen B cavity and the southeastern Bellingshausen Sea have been obtained from the data centers of Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO), gridded, and blended into the existing bathymetry map. The resulting global 1-minute topography data set (RTopo-1) contains maps for upper and lower ice surface heights, bedrock bathymetry, and consistent masks for open ocean, grounded ice, floating ice, and bare land surface.

Publisher: Copernicus Publications