The effect of climate factors on Antarctic Ice Sheet Changes from Radar Altimetry

Abstract

The Antarctic ice sheet change is one of the key factors affecting global climate change. The influence of climate factors obscures the understanding to elevation change of the ice sheet. Due to the lack of understanding of the quantitative relationship between climate events and elevation change of Antarctic ice sheet, we here combined climate factor data to quantify the impact of climate events on the elevation change of Antarctic ice sheet. A strong correlation between climate factors and elevation change of ice sheet was found. And the influence between them exists time delay in some extent. Meanwhile, the influence of climate factors in the Antarctic ice sheet change was separated from the ice sheet change based on the Independent Component Analysis (ICA) and multivariate linear regression model. The study also indicates that the influence of climate factors may be an important contribution for the accelerated decline of ice sheet elevation in the Amundsen Sea.