57-Year Ice Velocity Dynamics in Byrd Glacier Based on Multisource Remote Sensing Data

Long time-series glacier ice velocity reflects the local climate changes and can be used to estimate mass balance (MB) changes, which is a critical parameter for understanding of glacier- climate interactions and prediction of sea level rise. However, due to the difficulty in image matching caused by the poor quality of historical satellite images, there was insufficient glacier ice velocity data before 1999. Here, we proposed a multiple-constraint dense image matching approach for mapping historical ice velocity based on the early poor-quality images from ARGON, Landsat-1, and Landsat-4/5. We successfully applied this method to Byrd Glacier to generate its historical ice velocity maps from 1963 to 1999. Additionally, ice velocity maps of Byrd Glacier from 2000 to 2014 were generated by IMCORR software using Landsat-7 and Landsat-8 images. Combining with the ice velocity maps from the Global Land Ice Velocity Extraction from Landsat-8 dataset since 2014, we obtained the ice velocity of Byrd Glacier for 57 years. Our results showed that the glacier experienced slight fluctuations in ice velocity, which may not be due to the calving events in the studied portion of the Ross Ice Shelf or the air temperature changes, but by the activity of subglacial drainage systems. Furthermore, Byrd Glacier showed a positive MB (average rate of 2.6 +/- 2.0 Gt/year) from 1963 to 2020, indicating that global climate change may have a limited impact on it.

Automated summary

Research found that the velocity of Byrd Glacier remained stable from 1963 to 2020, indicating that it was not significantly affected by calving events or air temperature changes, but rather influenced by subglacial drainage systems. Additionally, the glacier showed positive mass balance during this period, suggesting that global climate change has had limited impact on it.