Glaciers, an Observatory of Climate – SurfAce Mass Balance of Antarctica

This project is the renewal of the GLACIOCLIM SAMBA program initiated in 2004, which is the Antarctic component of the SNO GLACIOCLIM, designed to detect, monitor and understand the evolution of climate and mass balance in the ice environment. After more than 15 years of measurements, INSU agreed to review the outline of the labelled measurements and to add those carried out before by the glacier dynamics program (DACOTA program) and the snow processes program (NIVO program). 

It is now a question of ensuring the sustainability of the surface mass balance measurement networks historically linked to the SAMBA program, in the Cap Prud’homme area (CP, D1 network surveyed in summer and winter), at D10 and along a 157 km transect (1 survey/year), and at Concordia (3 networks, 1 survey/year), as well as the maintenance of the meteorological instruments deployed near CP. The network of automatic stations now includes meteorological and radiative flux stations at D3, D17 and Dome C (from previous NIVO project). The so-called historical meteorological station at Gravimeter Rock has been removed from the network but relocated to the D5 site in 2021/22. The automatic camera has been definitively removed. On the snow component (formerly linked to the NIVO project), the temperature profiles measured in the snow at Dome C and D10, as well as the weekly measurements of the surface density of the snow at Dome C are now labelled. In addition, the radiation balance station installed at D10 will join the pool of labelled stations during the quadrennium. Finally, concerning the monitoring of glacier dynamics and the grounding line, the measurement network of 9 GNSS beacons installed on the Astrolabe glacier and the geodetic profiles (measurement with the differential geodetic GNSS) have been labelled.