Using HPC to expose factors contributing to ice mass loss in Antarctica

Summary of findings

Ice mass loss from the West Antarctic ice sheet contributes to sea level rise. Analysis of a 25-year (1996–2021) record of satellite data showed that, since 1996, the Amundsen Sea Embayment has lost 3331 ± 424 billion tonnes of ice, contributing 9.2 ± 1.2 mm to global sea level. Importantly, it was shown for the first time that extreme years of low or high snowfall have substantial impacts on the annual rates of ice mass loss.

a) 2017–2021 ice speed over the Amundsen Sea Embayment derived from intensity tracking of Sentinel-1a and -1b Synthetic Aperture Radar images. b) Ice speed change calculated as the difference between the mean 2021 speed from Sentinel-1 and the 2005–2008 MEaSUREs annual mosaics.

Application of Research Computing

Researchers on this project made extensive use of the University's High Performance Computing (HPC) systems, ARC3 and ARC4, for processing large volumes of satellite images. This enabled them to estimate rates of ice motion across West Antarctica. Assisted by HPC, they were able to process around 70,000 image pairs in total, turning over in excess of 100 TB of data and producing in excess of 25 TB of output.

Having easy access to HPC systems at Leeds, close to network storage and systems used for post processing and analysis, is a valuable asset which greatly assists in the speed of processing data, analysing output and publishing the results.

- Richard Rigby, Software Development Scientist

Reference

Davison, B.J., Hogg, A.E., Rigby, R. et al. Sea level rise from West Antarctic mass loss significantly modified by large snowfall anomalies. Nat Commun 14, 1479 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-36990-3