1. Australian Antarctic Data Centre
2. Discover and Manage Data
3. Records
4. AAS_4096_AM01_Brancker

Description

AM01 borehole drilled January 2002.

AM01b borehole drilled mid-December 2003.
No new thermistor strings deployed.

Consult Readme file for detail of data files and formats.

2011-2012 data may be final data from the unit owing to battery failure.

The original project for this dataset was ASAC 1164, but recent data fall under the auspices of project AAS 4096.

From the ASAC_1164 metadata record:
Most of the snow falling on inland Antarctica drains via large ice streams and floating ice shelves to the sea where it lost by iceberg calving or as melt beneath the shelves. Ocean interaction beneath the shelves is complicated, and regions of basal refreezing as well as melt occur. These processes are important not only because they are a major component of the Antarctic mass budget, but because they also modify the characteristics of the ocean, influencing the formation of Antarctic Bottom Water which plays a major role in the global ocean circulation. The processes are sensitive to climate change, and shifts in ocean temperature or circulation near Antarctica could lead to the disappearance of all Antarctic ice shelves.

The Amery
Ice Shelf is the major embayed shelf in East Antarctica, and the subject of considerable previous ANARE investigation. Ocean interaction processes occurring beneath the shelf are only poorly understood, and this project will directly measure water characteristics and circulation in the cavity underneath the ice shelf, and the rates of melt and freezing on the bottom of the shelf. These measurements will be made through a number of access holes melted through the shelf. The project is closely linked with other projects investigating the circulation and interactions in the open ocean to the north of the shelf, and studies of the ice shelf flow and mass budget.

There will be child records for each of the following data sets:
AM01 and AM01 b boreholes
* CTD profiles through water column
* CTD annual records at selected depths
* Ocean current profiles through water column
* Temperature measurements through ice shelf and across ice-water interface
* Small ice core samples
* 0.5 m sea floor sediment core
* Video footage of borehole walls (including marine ice) and sea floor benthos
* GPS records of surface tidal motion
* Video

Quality

See Readme file ... data collected as header, then 8 x celsius temperature columns for each of 8 x thermistors on the cable ... uppermost sensor in leftmost column of data ... data collected at 0.5 hour sampling rate for several days after initial installation, then 6 hour rate ... batteries fail in loggers after weeks to months, but can be replaced annually ...

Note - depths provided in spatial coverage are referenced back to sea level.

The minimum depth of 65 metres asl refers to the height of the ice surface.

Access

These data are publicly available for download at the provided URL.

Temporal Coverages

• Start date: 2011-07-01 - Stop date: 2012-06-30

Spatial Coverages

Science Keywords

• EARTH SCIENCE > CRYOSPHERE > SNOW/ICE > SNOW/ICE TEMPERATURE
• EARTH SCIENCE > OCEANS > MARINE SEDIMENTS > STRATIGRAPHIC SEQUENCE
• EARTH SCIENCE > OCEANS > BATHYMETRY/SEAFLOOR TOPOGRAPHY > WATER DEPTH
• EARTH SCIENCE > OCEANS > OCEAN CIRCULATION > OCEAN CURRENTS
• EARTH SCIENCE > OCEANS > SALINITY/DENSITY > CONDUCTIVITY
• EARTH SCIENCE > CRYOSPHERE > SNOW/ICE > ICE DEPTH/THICKNESS
• EARTH SCIENCE > OCEANS > MARINE SEDIMENTS > SEDIMENTATION
• EARTH SCIENCE > OCEANS > OCEAN TEMPERATURE > THERMOCLINE
• EARTH SCIENCE > OCEANS > SALINITY/DENSITY > SALINITY
• EARTH SCIENCE > CRYOSPHERE > GLACIERS/ICE SHEETS > ICE SHEETS
• EARTH SCIENCE > OCEANS > MARINE SEDIMENTS > SEDIMENT COMPOSITION
• EARTH SCIENCE > OCEANS > OCEAN TEMPERATURE > POTENTIAL TEMPERATURE
• EARTH SCIENCE > OCEANS > OCEAN TEMPERATURE > WATER TEMPERATURE
• EARTH SCIENCE > CRYOSPHERE > SNOW/ICE > SNOW/ICE CHEMISTRY

Use Constraints

This data set conforms to the CCBY Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Please follow instructions listed in the citation reference provided at http://data.aad.gov.au/aadc/metadata/citation.cfm?entry_id=AAS_4096_AM01_Brancker when using these data.