AGASEA/BBAS

The joint AGASEA/BBAS survey of the Amundsen Sea Embayment took place between mid-December, 2004, and February, 2005. The task was to map the ice thickness, magnetic field and gravity field over the catchments of Thwaites Glacier and Pine Island Glacier.

The survey was comprised of two parts: the U.S. AGASEA survey, lead by J. W. Holt of the University of Texas in Austin, and the U.K. BBAS survey, lead by D. G. Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey. Both surveys used multi-instrumented Twin Otter aircraft.

The Airborne Geophysics of the Amundsen Sea Embayment (AGASEA)

The AGASEA project was conceived in response to the U. S. glaciological community's Amundsen Sea Embayment Project [http://www.ig.utexas.edu/research/projects/agasea/publications/asep-final.pdf] , in light of rapid changes in the grounding line position, ice velocity and surface elevation of the major galciers abutting Pine Island Bay which were being observed in repeated satellite observations. [Rignot, E. J. (1998), Fast recession of a West Antarctic glacier, Science, 281, 549–551. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.281.5376.549] ] [Shepherd, A., D. J. Wingham, and J. A. D. Mansley (2002), Inland thinning of the Amundsen Sea sector, West Antarctica, Geophysical Research Letters, 29(10), 1364, 10.1029/2001GL01418. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2001GL014183 ] ] However, ice thickness observations were limited to IGY-era seismic traverse measurements, one NSF/SPRI/TUD radioglaciological flight line flown from Byrd Station in 1979; and four Centro de Estudios Cientificos/NASA/University of Kansas flights flown from Punta Arenas in December 2002.

In 2003 the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics won a $1.6 million, four year award from NSF to survey this region in collaboration with the British Antarctic Survey [Award [http://nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0230197 0230197] from the Office of Polar Programs ] .

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