Assessing Land Ice Height Decrease of the Fleming Glacier using ICESat-2 Satellite Data: A 2019-2022 Analysis

Abstract

The following report investigates the land ice height decrease of the Fleming Glacier between 2019 and 2022 using ICESat-2 satellite data. This glacier is located on the Antarctic Peninsula, an area that has been severely impacted by global warming. Using data from the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS) on board ICESat-2, more specifically its ATL06 product, the average land ice heights in 2019 and 2022 could be compared. This was done with the aid of Python and the icepyx library, which allows for an easy extraction of the desired data from the NASA Eathdata website. The raw data had to be processed and filtered to eliminate the NaN values and reduce the noise. The resulting height measurements were then plotted and an average rate of land ice height decrease of 4.40 metres over the 3-year period was found, which corresponds to a 1.47 m/year decrease. The findings of this study indicate a slightly lower value compared to the results reported by Friedl et al. in their 1994-2016 study. However, this discrepancy is plausible, particularly considering the episode of increased ice melting observed in the Fleming Glacier after 2008, which can be attributed to the disintegration of the Wordie Ice Shelf. Crucially though, due to an issue with the Reference Ground Track overlap the amount of common data points found was just 27. This is insufficient to draw definitive conclusions regarding the overall melting of the entire Fleming Glacier. Future research, especially involving the use of the ATL11 product, is therefore recommended for this region.