SMART DML

Surface Mass Balance Assessment with Radar Technology in Dronning Maud Land to investigate the sea level mitigation potential of East Antarctica

01/05/2026 to 30/04/2027

Constraining the future mitigation potential of the East Antarctica is crucial for understanding global sea level rise due to the vast amount of water stored in the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. However, past observations are limited, and future projections remain uncertain, with contrasting signals regarding East Antarctica's contribution. High-resolution surface mass balance reconstructions from the 18th century to today are needed to quantify recent changes and assess accumulation trends in a warming climate. This project is a renewal proposal of the project QUASNO. QUASNO has successfully collected and
analyzed an extensive set of airborne radar data. These data have been linked to firn cores and provide the first spatial map over more than 150,000 km2 of centennially averaged surface mass balance changes in an insufficiently investigated sector of Antarctica. However, the main instrument for high-resolution mapping (i.e., decadal or below) could not be used. However, a follow up airborne mission has already been granted. This project, SMART DML, will lead the corresponding data acquisition and analysis. This directly builds on the workflow developed in QUASNO and will close the temporal gap needed to quantify East Antarctica's mitigation potential to sea level rise on human-relevant timescales.