Abstract
AbstractAcross the Antarctic Ice Sheet, accumulation heavily influences firn compaction and surface height changes. Therefore, accumulation varies over short distances (<25 km), complicating the derivation of ice sheet mass changes from altimetry and reducing how accurately field measurements can be spatially extrapolated. However, current atmospheric reanalyses have grid spacings (>25 km) that are too coarse to resolve this variability. To address this limitation, we construct a fine‐scale accumulation product from airborne snow radar observations by superimposing along‐track fluctuations in accumulation onto an atmospheric reanalysis product. Our resulting airborne product reflects large‐scale (>25 km) orographic precipitation patterns while providing robust and unprecedented insight into Antarctic accumulation variability on subgrid scales. On these smaller scales, we find significant, regionally dependent accumulation variability (σrelative>40%). This variability in accumulation is correlated with variability in topographic surface slope in the wind direction (p<0.01), confirming that subgrid‐scale accumulation variability is driven by snow redistribution by wind.
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