EXceptional Queen mAud Land Ice mass Balance incRease – causes and effects

Amidst reports of increasing loss of ice along the Antarctic margins, The Queen Maud Land region has stood out as a singular exception, with considerable mass gains during recent years. Understanding the causes and effects of this change is crucial our capacity to predict future of the entire Ice Sheet, we propose a research project tasked with resolving the ice mass balance with high precision across spatial and time domains, using a wide set of satellite observations and state-of-the-art ice sheet model outputs as basis. We resolve the mass balance separately for each of its components, thus gaining the ability to identify the most important contributors to the recent ice mass gain.

Field work at the Finnish Aboa research stations plays a key role in the project, with novel drone-mounted instruments yielding wide coverage data on the state of the ice sheet and its interior. International collaboration with world-leading research teams is likewise a crucial component of the plan.