Antarctic-wide annual ice flow maps from Landsat 8 imagery between 2013 and 2019

Abstract

Ice velocity constitutes a key parameter for quantifying ice-sheet discharge rates and is thus crucial for improving the coupled models of the Antarctic ice sheet towards accurately predict its contribution to future global sea-level rise. However, in Antarctica, high-resolution and continuous ice velocity estimates remain elusive, which is key to unravel Antarctica’s present-day ice mass balance processes. Here, we present a suite of newly estimated Antarctic-wide, annually-sampled ice velocity products at 105-m grid-spacing observed by Landsat 8 optical images data. We first describe a procedure that can automatically calibrate and integrate ice displacement maps to generate Antarctic-wide seamless ice velocity products. The annual ice velocity mosaics are assembled using a total of 250,000 displacement maps inferred from more than 80,000 Landsat 8 images acquired between December 2013 and April 2019. The new annual Antarctic ice velocity data product exhibits an improved quantification of near-decadal Antarctic-wide ice flow, and an opportunity to investigate ice dynamics at a higher spatial resolution and annual sampling, as compared to existing data products. Validation studies confirmed improved accuracy and consistency of this new data product, when compared with independently estimated optical and radar ice velocity data products, as well as in situ data.