Evaluation of the glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) models for Antarctica based on GPS vertical velocities

Abstract

Due to the scarcity of data, modeling the glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) for Antarctica is more difficult than it is for the ancient ice sheet area in North America and Northern Europe. Large uncertainties are observed in existing GIA models for Antarctica. Modern space-based geodetic measurements provide checks and constraints for GIA models. The present-day uplift velocities of global positioning system (GPS) stations at 73 stations in Antarctica and adjacent regions from 1996 to 2014 have been estimated using GAMIT/GLOBK version 10.5 with a colored noise model. To easily analyze the effect of difference sources on the vertical velocities, and for easy comparison with both GIA model predictions and GPS results from Argus et al. (2014) and Thomas et al. (2011), seven sub-regions are divided. They are the northern Antarctic Peninsula, the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, the Amundsen Sea coast, the Ross Ice Shelf, Mount Erebus, inland Southwest Antarctica and the East Antarctic coast, respectively. The results show that the fast uplift in the north Antarctic Peninsula and Pine Island Bay regions may be caused by the elastic response to snow and ice mass loss. The fast subsidence near Mount Erebus may be related to the activity of a magma body. The uplift or subsidence near the East Antarctic coast is very slow while the uplift for the rest regions is mainly caused by GIA. By analyzing the correlation and the associated weighted root mean square (WRMS) between the GIA predictions and the GPS velocities, we found that the ICE-6G_C (VM5a) model and the Geruo13 model show the most consistency with our GPS results, while the W12a and IJ05_R2 series models show poor consistency with our GPS results. Although improved greatly in recent years, the GIA modeling in Antarctica still lags behind the modeling of the North American. Some GPS stations, for example the Bennett Nunatak station (BENN), have observed large discrepancies between GIA predictions and GPS velocities. Because of the large uncertainties in calculating elastic responses due to the significant variations of ice and snow loads, the GPS velocities still cannot be used as a precise constraint on GIA models.