Overview
- Using Ice Flow Perturbation Analysis with high‑resolution satellite surface data and limited thickness measurements, researchers produced a continent‑scale map of subglacial topography published in Science.
- The map resolves mesoscale features 2 to 30 kilometers across, including deep alpine valleys, scoured lowlands, extensive buried fluvial channels stretching hundreds of kilometers, and tens of thousands of hills and ridges.
- By capturing how bed roughness shapes ice flow, the dataset is intended to improve ice‑sheet models and reduce uncertainty in projections of ice loss and sea‑level rise.
- The newly resolved textures reveal patterns of past glacial sculpting across the continent, offering fresh constraints on Antarctica’s evolution and present‑day ice dynamics.
- Authors and independent commentators note the approach depends on assumptions about ice deformation, basal sliding, and melt–freeze processes, so follow‑up airborne and ground surveys are needed.